The very newness of YOU

March 20, 2021

Dear Reader,

I do so miss you.

Amid the loneliness of the continued Covid related isolation, confusion, extended pandemic rules and restrictions, the “little things” have brought happiness. There were bouquets of flowers, cases of home-made wine, wood fired pizzas, fresh laundry, shelves full of free treats at my new workplace, bonfires, ice skating, long walks, new songs, luxurious soft pastels, wax carvings and the simple joy of making drawings.

Nothing, however, could compare to my one BIG THING. I normally do not share such personal details, but Dear Reader, I want to tell you that I was married last spring, in a small, backyard, June 2020 wedding. We placed the 9 guest chairs and ceremonial arch right outside of my beloved little studio. Craig and I served a home cooked meal to accompany my home made wine, on a table for 30, that we built in our shed. I bought second hand, assorted china and silverware, for the sit down meal. We had backyard and table games, music from our phones played through Bluetooth speakers and a “Hot Rod” garage for people to mix their own drinks.

Please, forgive my desires. Forgive my heartfelt impulse to overshare and the confusion I may have caused you with my old fashioned name change to go with the nuptials.

Perhaps we can get to know one another again.

In love,

Susan

DC-19 : PC-19: AC-19 (During, Pre and After Covid-19)

DC-19

My dear quiet reader,

Have you been well? I hope that spring and the promise of summer are keeping hope alive in your heart during these trying times. Please, remember to enjoy the simple pleasure of an open window letting fresh air into your home; the sunlight and shadows making ephemeral drawings on everything they touch; and the way the delicate buds of the trees are starting to color in the places where leaves will soon appear.

As for myself, I am now home bound, furloughed from my normal job and so, there is nothing to stop the day from being FULL of art, the studio a wonderland. With the extra time, I can have enough to share with you and so, please, note, that until further notice:

PRIVATE ART LESSONS ARE OFFERED on line; via Skype or through old fashioned postal delivery for ages 8 and up. No on site studio classes until AC-19. There will no longer be limits on the number of students, as my days will be relatively free for now. Please email ssvedau@att.net or call/text to arrange (715) 864-4185. Include your name, age and contact information with a brief description of your interest in art explained in your message. If you want my credentials, I can send a Curriculum Vitae to you, describing my teaching experience.

Charges are $30 per hour/lesson, per person for individual lessons. $25 per hour/lesson, per person in a group of 2 to 5 people. Charges are payable in advance, with a 2 lesson minimum. Book a series of 10 lessons and receive 2 bonus lessons (with supplies included for the 2 extras) for free. A small supply list will be sent in advance of the start of your lessons. Don’t worry…if supply budgets are a concern, you can do miracles with a simple pencil and piece of paper, I promise!

PC-19

“On Love: Exploring Hearts and Minds” was exhibited at the Pablo Center for the Arts, in Eau Claire, WI from January 17, 2020 through March 8, 2020.

Pablo Center: https://www.pablocenter.org/visual-arts/galleries/

Reception Announcement: https://www.facebook.com/events/2565308503795069/

Related merchandise for sale: https://shopvida.com/collections/susan-sveda-uncapher

Books are no longer for sale at Volume One, but there are still a few left. Contact me if you would like to purchase one. If you find yourself in Hudson, WI, the PHIPPS Center for the Arts has two copies for sale in their gift shop. The Phipps exhibit is also completed. https://thephipps.org/

AC-19

What comes next, remains to be seen. Be kind dear reader. Simply, be kind.

abundance

Dear Reader,

Leave yours at my home. I want to do everything.

Artsy Updates:

Now offering private art lessons, upon request. Please email or call 715-864-4185 to arrange. Limitted availability.

Showing at the Phipps in Hudson 01AUG to 08SEPT19.

The next season was announced at the Pablo Center, and so…watch their site and/or mine for details as the next exhibit unfolds. “ON LOVE” is planned for 17JAN to 08MAR20. I am creating all new work for this one, my dear reader. I hope that you will come share the experience with me.

SILENCE and a SPARKLE

Dear Reader,

It is GOLDEN. It has been arranged. I am planning.

Two works were juried into and shown in the recent exhibition at the James W. Hansen Gallery at the Pablo Center at the Confluence, in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. “Give the Best that you have in you: A UWEC Alumni Show" ran from February 1, 2019 through the closing reception on March 15, 2019.

This fall, watch for an official announcement of a new exhibition for which I am VERY excited. I may post small clues here, as always, but will keep the majority of new work under wraps until it is on display. I will announce once the venue completes their publicity for the next gallery season. I hope that you will fall in love with the new work. It awaits your gaze.

Until next time, dear reader…

no reply

Dear Reader. I made a book for you.

The Artist’s book, “unanswered prayers”, is a full color, 48 page, 8” x 11”, lay flat, hardcover book. The book illustrates, describes and documents the working stages and visual references for the final pieces of art created during my year long artist residency at Christ Church Cathedral in Eau Claire, WI. It serves as an accompaniment to the winter 2017 exhibition.

The book is available for purchase through the Local Store, located at 205 N Dewey Street, Eau Claire, WI 54703.

Phone: (715) 552-0457

Email: localstore@volumeone.org

Web: https://thelocalstore.org/products/unanswered-prayers

Reverberations

 

Dear Reader.

Are you there?

Can you see how memories sparkle, bounce and fade like the light upon the water this hot summer evening? How dappled shadows from shimmery green leaves freckle the grass outside? I want you to whisper your untold love story, softly, to me, as I fall asleep beneath stars tonight.

FOUR LEAF CLOVER

Dear Reader,  Please, join me in Celebration on November 3, 2017, from 6:30pm - 8pm in the Great Hall of Christ Church Cathedral for the Opening Reception of my newest work.

The culmination of my year long residency is now upon me. I have a small selection of work to show you with "Unanswered Prayers", an exhibition running October 28 through November 12, 2017 at the above noted Cathedral. I will be present at the opening reception to answer your questions.

As this year of concentrated reflection and work ends, another begins. In addition to completing the residency, we have finished my studio at home. I look forward to resettling my practice here, with plans already in mind for a 2018 extravaganza of projects.

Stay watchful for clues dear reader...sometimes fortune smiles upon you, or maybe that is love.

The Air and How to Fill It

My Dear Reader, The space between us has grown these past months. I hope that you are still there, watching and waiting.

If so, I have a simple gift for you, the recipe for old-fashioned Dandelion Wine:

When the plant blooms, it is wine making time. Pick a peck of dandelion blooms and put them into a five-gallon crock. Pour five pounds of sugar over them in four and a half gallons of boiling water. Cool to a luke-warm temperature, then add two cakes of crumbled up yeast. Stir the wine every day for approximately fifteen days. Strain through two cloth strainers. The wine will be pale yellow and is ready to drink immediately, or be bottled for later.

Once again, I wish you a happy summer. My favorite time of the year.

Recent update: Wisconsin Visual Artists Magazine FEB/MAR/APR 2017http://wisconsinvisualartists.com/download_jpg/2017-02-01.pdf

The Kindness of Strangers

My Dear Reader. I sit before you and breathe a heavy sigh of relief. I can now say that the holidays have ended, share with you that closure was obtained on a friend's death, limits of love continue to be observed, and once again I retreat to silence and my studio for respite. I am hiding in a blanket of snow, burrowed away, at peace with my imagination as bells toll the time and sing a bright song above me. Honored with Best of Show in the "Faith" exhibition in Georgia and with a year long residency, with free studio space here in Wisconsin, at Christ Church Cathedral. The kindness of strangers sadly brings more comfort and unabashed acceptance than from loved ones sometimes. Such a bittersweet lesson to have to learn over and over and over...

https://www.facebook.com/NonFictionGallery/photos/a.342742392484790.79018.326117507480612/1227722410653446/?type=3&theater

http://www.christchurcheauclaire.com/index.php/ministries/artist-in-residence/current-resident-artists

 

Dearly Departed

Reader, tonight I write for someone else. Forgive me.

Dearly Departed, you should know that I have not seen you in my dreams for some time now. Instead, I see you in the birds that visit outside my window and in the searching eyes of strangers. I cannot look away. Do not forget me, as I will not forget you.

Voyeurism

Dear Reader. Please Look. Please feel something...I have made you a gift, for your body. The Skin Print/Voyeur Collection of apparel and accessories for VIDA is based upon the photos in the +More Clues section. The photos shown on this site and used for the VIDA collection are part of a small series of images that were taken with a cell phone camera, exploring looking and voyeurism from a woman's point of view. Light flickering across a cheekbone, an ear glowing in the sunshine, a softly pale inner thigh, the dark hollow of a belly button, lips moist and softly parted before speaking and more, capture my attention and became the subject of this work. The series of photos was edited, printed and framed without digital manipulation and are presented in tiny, square frames for display in exhibitions. For the VIDA collection, I wished to thwart the seedy reputation of voyeurism as dirty peeking and celebrate warm fleshy expanses of skin colors and dark, sensual hollows of the body's shadows. The small photos were resized and used to create images on clothing to envelop the viewer and wearer in the sensual colors created by the body itself, on proud display for all to see.

http://shopvida.com/collections/susan-sveda-uncapher

http://shopvida.com/collections/voices/susan-sveda-uncapher

SILENCE

My Dear Reader...I will tell you, that lately, it seems there is simply nothing more to say with words. The gap created by the silence is so large that it has become a vast and glorious plane, full of wonders and curious things. I am setting off, to see if I can traverse the plane. If I succeed, dear reader, I will bring the images back home, to share with you. Please, wait for me.

NO WASTED SPACE

Thinking in pictures this morning. Contemplating the essential nature of being alone. Allowing for a sense of loneliness as it arises. I imagine the Mater Dolorosa (Dieric Bouts workshop) and The Grand Arab (He Only has Sand) by Dubuffet.  I wander through the paintings, thinking about the ways that they appear so alone on the surface and then fall into the breadth of emotional and cultural space behind them. 

GHOST

Dear Reader I am watching. Watching you. I begged the darkness to keep its eyes off you. Have you done the same for me?

I lost the sugar sculpture "Waiting" to Michigan, after the "Never Not Broken" exhibition ended. It was not able to make the journey home. The second work exhibited, the obituary piece "Alphabet...", did make it back, thanks to the efforts of the staff at the 117 Gallery/Ann Arbor Art Center. "Waiting" will exist only as a ghost, in photo documentation now. And so, I begin again, back to the studio today after a bit of a melancholy lull.

Imposter: The Long Ride Home 7/17

I am dutifully sifting quickly through winks, favorites, emails and stars. My mind has left, wandering to the place I watch quietly from and see everything I need...

  • I see the doe eyed, long haired man with a beard, shyly sneaking sidelong glances at me.
  • The retarded teenage boy who beams a smile to greet me in the morning.
  • The same boy kicking small heavy clumps of snow out of the way, to create a path so I can use it to get on the bus without stepping in the deeper snow. The boy has no boots on. I do. I tell him that he is a true gentleman. Again, the smile and a proud explanation that he has been "raised right."
  • I see the elderly woman who gives me her address at the Senior Living Facility and asks me to please come visit her.
  • The trio of slow girls, crushed together, with one apologizing for not having fed the other two when they dropped in. If only they had let her know they were coming she would have made something nice for them to eat. And by the way, has the third taken her medicine today?
  • The woman with the small black wired cart and pull suitcase. She is wearing three coats. She tells me she once had a house...when she was young...but lost it on account of a man.
  • The never ending supply of patient bus drivers who unhook the wheelchair for the girl with the paralyzed legs. Her stop is the Technical College.
  • That same girl. Her proud back.
  • The strange sad man who did not know where the entry door was to a hotel he was to apply for a job in maintenance at.
  • The young man who whisper sang a metal ballad to me, about the "land of snow and ice".
  • The couple loudly discussing the merits of pizza, eggs and toast and also of the crock pot.
  • The ability to reach up and pull a cord, to ding a bell, when one has had enough and can stop the ride.

The SHRINE at Ise

Working on projects now, almost every day, as the weather grows colder. I know that I should take up an outdoor sport to enjoy the seasons that are not summertime, but I hibernate in my studio anyway. I am thinking a lot. Dreaming a lot. Right now I am thinking about the Main Shrine (Inner Shrine) at Ise, Japan. With only a few lapses, it has been completely and exactly rebuilt every twenty years since the late seventh century. It is both ancient and new, forever. Permanent and impermanent. I wonder what would happen if the same care and process could be applied to a relationship. What would it mean and how would it feel to lovingly and carefully dissect each of the precious years that fade together into vanilla after 20 years and reconstruct them as if they were fresh and new? Would it feel like pretending, or would the act of the dissection and reconstruction force one into seeing with new eyes? Would memory become a hindrance or a helper in seeing? Could we ever even contemplate such a thing as a rebuilt relationship with fresh eyes? Would we recognize what was before us if we could? While this works with a Shrine, I am not certain the concept could be abstracted into the realm of a relationship. But still...I am imagining. I am starting by ripping apart, cutting apart, dissecting and reconstructing the old vanilla pieces and seeing what happens. Perhaps I will show it to you in the early summer, dear reader. Perhaps you will remember.