Susan Newmark

 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/susan_newmark/

Susan Newmark is a mixed media artist exploring themes of memory, narrative, identity, buddhist teachings, nature and home with sources from popular culture, found papers, vintage wallpaper, and photo imagery through acrylics, watercolor, graphite and fabric remnants. This additive collage process – layering, sanding, repainting and resanding – results in complex surfaces juxtaposing color and form revealing surprises and nuance. In isolation during covid, the artist began to question “home”’ as a place of safety and refuge in an ominous world of contagion, climate warming, and malevolent politics. Her collages during this period of isolation reference the Romans who built Pompeii and thought they were invincible until catastrophe destroyed them. Her woven abstract collages depict luxurious villas with their extravagant floor plans, gardens, and elaborate architectural decorations. Compositions begin arbitrarily, are open and extend into space no longer tied to the rectangle. Working on them throughout the pandemic gave the artist a sense of calm and focus. A form of mending, weaving is repetitive, meditative, and sustaining in times of uncertainty and dread.

Ms. Newmark has had solo exhibits at the Figureworks Gallery, Grand Army Plaza Library, the Garrison Art Center, and the galleries of Long Island, John Jay and St. John’s universities. Her work has been selected for shows at the Brooklyn Museum, the Parrish Museum, the Cummings Foundation, the Center for Book Arts and the Southampton Arts Center. Recently, she had a solo exhibition at bluetablepost in Boerum Hill and was in group shows at FDG Gallery, Metaphor Gallery, and the Brooklyn Waterfront Arts Coalition. She also has a banner on display in Arts Gowanus Brooklyn Utopias: Along the Canal. She had residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, the Lower East Side Printshop‚ the Women’s Studio Workshop, and Byrdcliffe Arts Center. She curated Special Editions: The Book As Art at Lehman College Gallery/CCNY and The Storyteller, a solo exhibition of the work of Olivia Beens at El Barrio Art Space, along with numerous exhibitions at Henry Street Settlement/Abrons where she was Deputy Director for Visual Arts and Arts-in-Education. She coordinated Dialogues in the Visual Arts, a series of artists’ conversations at Tribeca Performing Arts Center and the Brooklyn Public Library, was a Center for Book Arts board member, is on the advisory of Kentler Drawing Space, and teaches art to adults.