Sheary in the studio working with deconstructed textiles and wax to create free-hanging, suspended sculptures.
Artist Bio
Born and raised in Eugene, Oregon, Clough Suiter moved to Alaska in 1976 where she lived Alaska’s ‘Last Frontier’ lifestyle for 35 years. Returning to the Lower 48 in 2011, she savored the grandeur of the Rockies for eleven years from her studio in Colorado Springs, before returning to the Pacific Northwest, where she now proudly resides in the Simpsons' hometown of Springfield, Oregon.
A former dental hygienist, Alaska fishing lodge owner/operator, travel planner, literary journal editor, and author, Clough Suiter has pursued her visual art career since 1992.
Awards recognizing her expertise in encaustic include a Permanent Collection Purchase by the Anchorage Museum of Art, a Rasmuson Foundation Individual Artist Project Award, an International Encaustic Artists Project Grant, and an Alaska State Council on the Arts Career Opportunity Grant, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Clough Suiter received a month-long artist residency in Listowel, Ireland, where she painted, exhibited, and taught workshops.
Her encaustic fine art is represented in Anchorage, Alaska by Stephan Fine Art, in Camas, Washington by the Attic Gallery, in Green Mountain Falls, Colorado by Stones, Bones, & Wood Gallery, and in Colorado Springs, Colorado by Auric Gallery. When she's not traveling in her camper van along the back-roads of America with her artist partner Nard Claar, Suiter works from her home studio near the Willamette River.
Painting with fire! Each layer of wax must be carefully fused to the previous layer forming a permanent bond.
Artist Statement
A thirty year career visual artist, my primary medium has been encaustic painted onto a 2D cradled wood panel. The majority of the Gallery pages on this site exemplify the style of color and shape composition I'm known for, and that you can see in person at one of the many venues who continue to represent my encaustic paintings.
However, both my subject matter and materials have been shifting away from the flat panel. Producing a pleasing painting has given way to work that more directly reflects my personal social and political allegiances.
My 2019 installation, “I Never Played With Dolls” utilized waxed, wrapped, and knotted vintage porcelain dolls to create forms expressing feminist ideologies. In 2020, the suspended sculptures of “The Clothes We Wear” engaged the public with questions concerning the environmental and human costs of our Fast Fashion industry.
In 2022, I gave myself permission to embark on a self-directed sabbatical with the purpose of allowing space for this new direction to evolve. Current work is centered on processes that require patience and a willingness to let go of control. Utilizing rusting, eco-dying, raw earth pigments, and hand stitching on reclaimed textiles, these New Directions art forms connect content and media, while simultaneously communicating visually my love for our natural environment, providing me with an art practice that speaks both to sustainability in my daily studio work, as well as the urgent need for bold climate action.
Sourcing stitching and knotting skills passed on from my mother and grandmother, complex form emerges from simple components. Much like mending, the tying of thread creates something solid, strong, and regenerative...giving hope in times of uncertainty.
“Mending Mother Nature,” 2022– 2023, vintage cotton tea towel buried in Mother Earth for seven months, stained and decomposed via soil, rain, rodents, and rusty objects. Suturing of the cloth, sticks, and dirt clods that were embedded after “harvesting,” utilizing a reclaimed eco-dyed crocheted doily, various reclaimed textile scraps, and hand stitching with cotton, linen, and silk threads, 25 x 25 x 1 inches.
“INDEPENDENT,” Suspended Scroll Sculpture, Encaustic, Paper, Waxed Cord, 80 x 21 x 2 (detail).
Representation
See Contact.