Susan Graham (LA)

"The Bittersweet plant is paradoxically both poisonous and, in the Victorian language of flowers, symbolic of truthfulness and honesty. In this three-person exhibition Bittersweet, curated by participating artist Wendy Small, botanically-influenced works by Susan Graham, Wendy Small, and Simone Shubuck appropriate the complex intertwinings of foliate patterns to consider the fragile and fraught interconnections of relationships, technology, and the environment.

"Susan Graham works in media as diverse as ceramics, cut paper, woodblock prints, and sugary fondant icing. The latter she pipes into thready sculptures whose foliate understories transform into geometric manmade structures—power stations and construction scaffolding, for example—suggesting the often-uneasy co-habitation of technology and the natural environment."

"On a Tuesday morning in September, I met with sculptor and photographer Susan Graham at Lux Art Institute in Encinitas, California. Graham was more than halfway through her five-week artist residency and opened her studio to me, allowing an up-close view of her sugar and porcelain sculptures in the process of assembly. Graham shared stories from her childhood in Ohio, articulated her thoughts about working, and touched on how September 11 has altered the view of some of her earlier art."

"New York-based artist Susan Graham completed her residency at the Lux Art Institute on Saturday. In addition to a dozen works on display, she’s leaving behind an elegant, exquisite “Toile Landscape Wallpaper” that she created at Lux. Her work, including her undeniably fascinating “My Dad’s Gun Collection,” will be on view at Lux through Oct. 27."