Susan Hamburger
Susan Hamburger
Workspace Program Resident 2018
Dieu Donné gave me the opportunity to be a student and an explorer, working through multiple techniques and ideas. With the expert technical guidance and creative insights provided by Amy Jacobs, I had a collaborator who understood my visual idiom and could help me sort through a multitude of options. Her patience and support, and the aid of a host of interns, allowed my work to take shape. The process and its end results exceeded my expectations and has expanded the well upon which I can draw from when working with paper.
Having traveled a path from painting to drawing, to installation and sculpture, shaping wet paper and using it to create reliefs, was, for me, a perfect melding of concept and material, opening up many future possibilities when referencing art historical and decorative forms.
The many of gifts that Dieu Donné has provided — time, space, assistance and expertise — are ones for which I am extremely grateful.
—Susan Hamburger, 2018
For over a decade, Susan Hamburger has been making paintings and mixed media works that address social and political issues. Her imagery is inspired by patterns from Spode, Réveillon and Wedgwood’s Jasperware, which shows in the exquisitely detailed large-scale paper works made during her residency.
While in the Dieu Donné studio, Hamburger worked on oversized paper pulp panels by casting forms both by hand and through various moulds. In order to shape the more delicate sculptures by hand, paper pulp was partially pressed so as to make a solid but easily manipulated structure. Hamburger spent days in the studio sculpting these miniature flowers, birds, guns, bullets and chains — which are decoratively arranged in typical garland and trophy motifs. The final addition to these pieces is a hand-stenciled border created with linen pulp paint, framing each of these elements with 18th-century style filigree.
In the Studio
About the Artist
Susan Hamburger has held numerous solo exhibitions at One Main Window, NY; Auxiliary Projects, NY and Cheryl McGinnis Gallery, NY; among others. She has also been awarded the Wassaic Project Artist Printmaking Residency, NY; Abbey Mural Workshop Fellowship at the National Academy Museum of Fine Art, NY; Henry Street Settlement, A.I.R., NY; and chashama AREA Visual Arts Studio Award, NY. Hamburger has also visited as a guest lecturer to numerous institutions including Maryland Institute College of Art, University of Wisconsin, and University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
For more information, please visit their website: https://www.susanhamburger.net/