BioTrained as a painter, Suzanne studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Tufts University, and has an MFA from Maine Media College. She was a two-time winner of fellowships awarded by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. After receiving the first of these awards, she spent over a year on the road traveling alone, overland, through Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Far East. In the 1980’s and 90’s she made extended trips to South America to study birds in the Amazon basin and Central America. Suzanne has had many solo exhibitions and has been included in group shows over her long career including Yale University, New Haven, CT; Cove Street Arts, Portland, ME; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The De Cordova Museum, Lincoln, MA; Newport Art Museum, Newport, RI; Art Institute of Boston; Thomas Segal Gallery, Boston, MA; and Colby College, Waterville, ME. Suzanne lives in Maine with her two dogs and a large flock of chickens. Artist StatementI have a profound connection to the natural world and the human impact on our environment has been an overriding theme in my work throughout my years as an artist. The farm that I live on and have worked for decades, is my muse, where I record changes linked to climate disruption, time, and memory. Through an inter-disciplinary practice including photography, video, and site-specific installations, I explore issues of life, death, grief, and our cultural disconnect from nature. With my work I am asking, can art carry the burden of remembering the past, while confronting what the future may hold? For the project, Dry Stone No Sound of Water, I use my farm and the land it embraces, as well as T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land, as a muse. I construct what I think of as theaters by cutting, tearing, twisting, drawing, and arranging photographs I have taken on my farm for over forty years. I am creating imaginary landscapes and still life in the spirit of 17th century Vanitas paintings as I explore issues of life, death, indulgent consumption, and our cultural alienation from the natural world. The act of physically crushing and tearing a well-made photograph is a personal and performative existential act and a manifestation of my climate grief. With my work I am time traveling, investigating the past while presenting a potential future. I am asking the question: can art carry the burden of remembering the past while confronting what the future may hold? From a fixed point on the map, I am a traveler through the Anthropocene as I bear witness to the impact of climate change on my farm. This project allows me to be an advocate for the land, using art not only as a method of communication but a profound acknowledgement of the natural world and my desire to find splendor in what remains.