Flora, Fauna & Entrails

I'm excited to announce the inaugural exhibit of my Fiber Forms collection and work here in our new home state of Louisiana. The family and I will be attending the opening this weekend so if you're in the New Orleans area please stop by, take a gander at all the fiber art and say hello!

Fabric and thread are inextricably bound to our everyday lives. Flora, Fauna, and Entrails brings together artists using fibers in their practice to explore the beauty and fragility of the nature around them. Flora, Fauna, and Entrails is Antenna’s fourth exhibition exploring the work of artists that expand on the potential of fiber in contemporary art practices while still being steeped in craft traditions.

 Antenna presents:
Flora, Fauna, and Entrails
 3718 St. Claude St, New Orleans
On view: April 8 – May 7, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday April 8, 6-10pm
Daily hours: Tuesday through Sunday 12-5 

Featuring artists: Linda Beach, Raina Benoit, Raluca Iancu, Gina Phillips, and Suzanna Scott.

lee mis laVios

A grouping of twenty Coin Cunts is in Mexico City for their international debut in the exhibition lee mis laVios. This clever show title is a play on words meaning 'read my lips' with the capital letter 'V' symbolizing the vulva/vagina.

The exhibition, lee mis laVios, chooses to undress the vagina from its prejudices, fetishes and desires, aiming for the acceptance of its sexual naturalization.

Throughout traditional art history the vagina has been systematically excluded, its representations either fade under a translucent veil or are replaced by a sexless pubis. This absence of detail has transformed it into an obscene and indiscreet symbol.

The gesture of symbolizing the vagina becomes an excuse to avoid it. Masculine gaze has constructed a specific imagery around it, based on simultaneous desire-censorship and summing it up through fertility symbols, objects of desire or immoral impurities. Its materialization is either morbid or symbolic. Indeed, vaginas have lost their right to (re)present themselves.

Lee mis laVios unveils the vagina from its prejudices in order to confront it as it is. By analyzing its allegorical connections we deconstruct the structure that surrounds it.

Read my lips: a vagina is more than anything, a vagina. It does not require any validation by dignifying it through symbols. The vagina exists as it is, dignified and worthy of its being. Now it's time to make this evident. 

lee mis laVios

31 de Marzo - 14 de Abril

Ex Iglesia de Corpus Christi

Mexico City, Mexico

Participating artists include Jamie Martinez, Maisie Cousins, Suzanna Scott, Rosa Borras, Sara Lorusso and Los Ninxs.

Playing With Scissors

Thought I'd share a few images of my Bound Scissors out in the wild. Playing with scissors is a safe activity as long as they're bound and stitched up tight! I'm pleased that this interactive piece has now been exhibited in three venues, a year ago in Touch: Interactive Craft, this past January in Material As Medium, and this weekend as part of Play, an all media exhibition at the SAA Collective in Springfield, Illinois. 

The exhibition Play was juried by Bob Dixon, an ceramicist and retired professor from Benedictine University. Play is the spontaneous, unstructured time found to foster creativity and problem-solving skills. As we grow up we tend to trivialize play and relegate it to childhood, but it’s an important element of life at any age. The exhibit features work not only about play in the traditional sense, but also the idea of being in the moment, of inspiring wonder, of invoking your natural curiosity. The viewers are encouraged to interact and play with many of the pieces on exhibit.

PLAY: All Media Exhibition

SAA Collective / H.D. Smith Gallery / Springfield, IL

March 10 - 31, 2017 

Opening reception March 11 / 5:30 - 7:30 pm

Participating artists: Bruce Alves, Lex Archibald, Piety Choi, Betsy Dollar, Lauren Feret, Cathy Ganschinietz, John Hayes, Tessa Martinez, Corrin Smithson McWhirter, Beth Rodgers, Suzanna Scott

Thank you to all of you who've shared your images of Bound Scissors via social media. #boundscissorproject

 

Image by Adele Stuckey

Image by Leslie Mounaime

Image by Katie Riggs

Image by Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts

Image by Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts

Encaustic Sculpture

 

Tangents, aluminum foil, plaster, encaustic, leather harness

During the second half of last year I spent a good deal of time experimenting with encaustic paint on three dimensional surfaces. Out of this process two finished works emerged and I've finally gotten around to photographing them for the website. This Spring I'll set up my window box fan to expel those pesky wax fumes and get to work on some more of these encaustic sculptures.

Convolution, epoxy resin, plaster, encaustic, artificial sinew, fabric, chain, fishing weight

 

Shafts & Glands

An evolution of glandular shapes and biomorphic shafts, this family of Fiber Forms has been reproducing, and I've added several new ones to the website. 

I am thinking of the intricate web in/of our reproductive bodies and throughout the natural world. A tangle of coital life, I explore the animate and inanimate alike--whether ovaries, stamens, mammary glands or ancient fertility fetishes, modern sex toys and contraceptive devices. 

Through these forms I seek to meld the visual pleasures of knots and knobs with the endless labyrinth of time and sensual memory through repetitive twisting, wrapping and stitching. 

Read more about the process of creating these Fiber Forms.

A Lifeline

A year and a half ago, soon after I turned 40, I gifted myself a sabbatical to explore a new direction in my work. One of the first projects I tackled was to fabricate a sculpture out of an antique quilt top that I'd been holding onto for years with this purpose in mind. The slow evolution of this unfinished quilt has been a learning process for me with many stops and starts.

First, I created a simple drop pattern and proceeded to cut up the entire quilt. The drops were stitched together and stuffed inside-out so the hand-pieced, textured surface would be visible. Ironically the quilt lent me 42 drops--the age I will be turning in a few months.

In order to unify the forms and emphasize their texture without the distraction of a country craft palette each one was painted with black gesso. The gesso transformed the drops from a soft pillow form into a calcified cocoon. After painting, I sanded and stitched the pods to re-emphasize the lines and textures of the original quilted surface. The final surface was fused with a layer of wax lending a skin-like smoothness to these seemingly rough forms.

Through each step this work has pushed and pulled me along. The process was much more involved than I could have predicted at the outset. Nevertheless, I'm glad I keep pulling it back out to puzzle out each step of its transformation. It is a quilt no longer. The 42 drops have been bound tightly to a spine of sorts. I arranged them onto an old lead rope using the measurements of my own torso. For whatever this is, I call it a Lifeline.

Reform: Subversive Fashion

Last month, before our move, I finished stitching over 100 'Coin Cunts' and shipped them off to Albuquerque, NM. They will be included, along with work by four other artists, in an exciting counter-culture fashion exhibition opening Friday at Central Features Contemporary Art. This will be the largest installation of the 'Coin Cunts' thus far. 

Missouri-based artist Suzanna Scott challenges visual and societal perceptions with Coin Cunts, a collection of coin purses. By turning each purse inside out to reveal and reform the different interior linings, Scott teases the imagination and sparks conversation about the ties amongst sexuality, gender, money, and fashion. 

 Nancy Zastudil, Central Features Contemporary Art

A video posted by Suzanna Scott (@suzanna_scott) on Aug 23, 2016 at 8:24am PDT

Contemporary fashion is in question and on display this Fall season at Central Features Contemporary Art. Cross programming and promotion is presented in conjunction with the exhibition ReFashion at form & concept in Santa Fe, NM. ReForm: Subversive Fashion is an exhibition of select garments, accessories, and other adornments that thwart conventional expectations. The exhibition features JUMPSUIT by The Rational Dress Society, an installation by Suzanna Scott, an interactive dress by Nina Silfverberg, collages by Kirsten Stolle, and new textile work by Sarah Wagner. 

Reform: Subversive Fashion

August 26 - September 30

Central Features Contemporary Art

514 Central Ave SW #2, Albuquerque, NM

Opening Reception on Aug 26th, 6-8pm

Coin Cunt Print

The 'Coin Cunt' project began innocently last summer when I was playing around with an old coin purse. I flipped it inside out, and saw a vaginal form emerge from my playful pinching and tucking. Using a needle and thread I stitched it into place. As I thought about it, I found so much association between the little pocket-like forms and the inferred suggestions that these new objects brought to mind.

I began sharing the 'Coin Cunts' on social media and am amazed at the feedback it has provided. With a simple alteration these ubiquitous objects became evocative and their appeal provocative when I dubbed them 'Coin Cunts'. Aside from the chuckles, I've found that others can see in this project our assumed cultural associations of money and women, prostitution, female genital mutilation, suppression of women, gender equality, body image ideals, equal pay and the list continues to grow.

Ever since the 'Coin Cunt' images began making their rounds on social media I've had to turn down numerous purchase requests. My goal with this project is to grow the collection until I have a large installation of 100 or more. In order finance the rest of this project and give you an opportunity to enjoy this image on a daily basis I'm offering a limited edition of 25 pigment prints on my website.

A video posted by Suzanna Scott (@suzanna_scott) on May 24, 2016 at 7:55am PDT