Interview
Susan Clinard
Susan Clinard is a contemporary American sculptor. Her life-scale figurative sculptures combine found objects, carved wood elements and fired ceramic heads and hands. Her compositions tell stories to help us connect and speak about our shared humanity. Susan’s allegorical mixed media sculptures reflect the times in which we live.
Susan is the 2019 winner of the national M.H.Hammerschal carving award and the Art by the Northeast 2018 award for sculpture. In 2015, she received the Arts Council of Greater NH artist award and IRIS’s Person of the Year honor.
She has been the artist in residence at the Eli Whitney Museum for the past ten years. Susan has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Palette and Chisel Academy of Fine Arts. She has received substantial public commissions, and her sculptures can be found in many private collections worldwide.
What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?
“My artist path is unconventional but in hindsight, completely necessary for the body of work I’ve been producing over the last 30 years. Art has always been at the core of my community building. It followed me through a foster care social work career after college, to teaching Chicago youth for 8 years in an arts job training program. For the last 15 years, I’ve been a volunteer, working with refugees who have resettled in the US from war-torn countries.
I started sculpting at the age of 19. Following a degree in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan, I moved to Chicago where my gift for storytelling took root. While exhibiting my art at multiple venues throughout the city, I also taught stone carving at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, sculpture at the Palette and Chisel Academy, and Gallery 37. In 2007, I moved my studio to New Haven, Connecticut.”
What does your work aim to say? Does it comment on any current social or political issues?
“At its core, my body of work is about connectivity. After working for 3 decades with diverse communities in the arts, I’ve found the same desires, shared fears and beauty throughout countless voices. My body of work echoes the powerful words of Nina Simone when she said, ‘Artists must reflect the times in which they live’.
The contemporary figurative nature of my large scale sculptures uses found objects and abstraction that emphasizes the impact and wonder of who we are.”
“By carving wood, forming clay, bending wire, and using found objects, I hope to reveal something that you already know, but have never felt or considered before. Someone else’s story or beauty - so that in turn you see yourself reflected.”
Which current art world trends are you following?
“It’s inspiring to see the art world begin to wake up and recognize how biased the institutions have been by exclusively celebrating white male artists. To begin to hear the voices of women and artists of color is nothing short of cathartic.”
Do you plan your work in advance, or is it improvisation?
“I work in both ways. If I’m working on a commission, I must plan my work out in advance. This allows me to offer a clearer picture of the completed work to my client. It’s also necessary to work in this way so I can write a budget and timeline for the project. However, the most natural way of creating work for me is through improvisation. There is nothing more free, honest or affirming. When I follow an instinctual internal process, I am tapping into that part of my creative self that uses no words; the part that speaks clearest and loudest.”
What process, materials and techniques do you use to create your artwork?
“I’m a mixed media sculptor. Although I’m still considered a contemporary figurative artist, I left traditional figure modeling over 20 years ago because I felt uninspired. There were so many things about life that I could not express with figure modeling alone: our human psyche, wonder, the unknown, and the invisible places we reach for. This was when I began using found objects in my work.
During the last 15 years in particular, I’ve incorporated a lot of antique machine part molds that were fabricated over 150 years ago. The idea of taking something old and turning it into something new is a simple but powerful idea that I’ve incorporated into my work for years. There are many layers of appreciation, inspiration and storytelling that can be gleaned from working with objects from the past. Oftentimes, the sheer craftsmanship of various machinery parts, wood patterns, and tools represent a past when mastery of craft was a vital part of how societies were built. But they also reveal a deeper internal voice, bound-up anxiety, fear, openness and wonder.”
What does your art mean to you?
"My art means everything to me. It helps me navigate this complex world. It helps me breathe. It helps me illuminate what is most important in life.
To quote what renowned architect Duo Dickerson has to say about my work, ‘Clinard’s world finds the crack between the prosaic and the sublime, and melds those parallel worlds into meaning. Meaning that is, for me, beautiful. In centering a part of its conception in our humanity, our culture, our reality, the pry bar of who we are leverages exquisite relevance. But without the lilt of vision, or an aesthetic, any attempt at beauty becomes artless commentary - as dry as a history book or a tweet. It is only when the artist, like Clinard, has one foot in who we are and the other in what we see and feel and know that art changes and reflects our lives. Susan Clinard. She finds hope in the maelstrom.’”
What’s your favorite artwork and why?
“I think art that hits me hardest is art brut, outsider art and children's art. I have been to the L'Art Brut Museum in Switzerland many times, and I leave so inspired and speechless.
When I look at this work, or work created by children, I feel their immediate honest nature. These creators work from a desire to merely express themselves, not to sell their work, please a critic, or to fit in the latest art trend. It is work from the gut, and it's spectacular.”
Have you had any noteworthy exhibitions you'd like to share?
“I’ve exhibited my work as shown below:
2021 - Border Crossings in Arts and Humanities, Contours Collaborations, Online.
2020 - The Newport Annual, Newport Art Museum, Newport, RI.
- The Golden Door, Silvermine Gallery, New Canaan, CT.
- Unraveling A Collective Mourning, H. Miossi Art Gallery, San Luis Obispo, CA.
- Winter Selects, Susan Ely Fine Arts, New York, NY.
2019 - Ric Michel Fine Art TriBeCa, Pop Up Gallery, Southampton, NY.
- Maryland Federation of Art, Annapolis, MD.
- Slater Museum, Norwich, CT.
- Places We've Been, Yale University Whitney Humanity Center, New Haven, CT.
2018 - Dedee Shattuck Gallery, Westport, MA.
2015 - Spaces In between, Artifact Gallery, New York.”
