About
Susan Fitzsimmons is from St. Louis, Missouri but now lives in Mobile, Alabama. She lived in Texas, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, and Illinois. Each new place required adaptations and pushed her creative evolution in new directions.
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"My work has always been greatly influenced by the cultural conditions of a place, the technology available, and the need to approach all creative work with an openness to dialogue with the audience. It has been my belief that creativity often takes place on the fringes."
Susan Fitzsimmons began making sculptures after graduating with her MFA from Southern Illinois University in 1973. She moved to New York in 1975 where had her first of several one-person exhibitions at Just Above Midtown Gallery (JAM). Over the years she has exhibited in over 250 shows, international, national, and local.
"We live in an increasingly virtual and transient world. Creating things only experienced in the real physical world, is central to my art practice. Seeing real objects is wonderfully different from the two-dimensional images we see on our devices. Chance and random events control much of our lives and are intricately woven into my process of making things. There is no hierarchy of materials, just what is available, including the body in performance. Each of my works are unique, one of a kind, typically using discarded materials such as cardboard, wood, fabric, palm leaves, seeds or sand. The process is like Jazz, a push and pull dialogue with materials with the viewer creating their own interpretation."
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