Susan Spencer Crowe
Susan Spencer Crowe has worked in a variety of disciplines. These include sculpture, painting, and printmaking. She has exhibited widely in New York City and in the Hudson Valley region. Susan lived in New York City for nearly 40 years before moving to Kingston, New York in 2005.
In 2018, Susan Spencer Crowe had two one person shows. Susan Spencer Crowe: Recent Paperworks at the Art Space at the Pine Hill Community Center. Also, Fractured Surface(s): Paperworks at the Foundation Gallery at Columbia Green Community Gallery in Hudson. Cuts and Folds: Susan Spencer Crowe at The Painters Gallery in Fleischmanns was in 2016.
Her work was included in group exhibitions in the Hudson Valley. They include The Sum of All Parts, curated by Kristen Rego at the Mildred Washington Gallery at Dutchess Community College in Poughkeepsie. Also, Putting It Together, curated by Alan Goolman at The Lockwood Gallery in Kingston. And, the 2020 Annual Exhibition of Artists of the Mohawk-Hudson Region. Susan Cross was the juror. She is the Senior Curator at MASSMOCA for the Albany Institute of History and Art in Albany. Julie Hedrick selected art for the first Kingston Annual 2020 at the Art Society of Kingston.
The New York Foundation for the Arts honored Crowe with two Artists Fellowships in sculpture. The Woodstock Artists Association and Museum awarded Crowe the 2018 Kuniyoshi Fund Award. She was named the Lily Auchincloss Foundation Sculpture Fellow in 2001.
Susan is retired from the Studio Art Program at Queens College in New York City. Her long career as an arts administrator served large and mid-sized cultural institutions. Examples include The Jewish Museum, the Whitney Museum of America Art, and the New Museum. In the mid 1980s, she was the Executive Director of the Lower East Side Printshop. Susan's MFA in Visual Art is from Vermont College of Norwich University. Her BFA with honors is from Pratt Institute.
An American Girl
1991
screen print
edition: 30
image size: 21"h X 29"h
7 colors on Rives BFK
An American Girl depicts a little girl growing up in America. She is well-dressed and seemingly happy, a model for the rest of the world. In 1991, Clarissa Sligh and I spoke extensively about our childhoods. We saw our lives unfolding in a world we only vaguely understood. Inspired by those conversations, I created this image.
My mother made a snapshot of me on the first day of school in the mid-1950s. I created a series of drawings of the same girl with her chest out and arms straight down by her side. Over the map of the U.S.A., a string of paper dolls crossed the page. Intentionally, these tense and stiff bodied little girls were like a "line up."
Standing at attention in front of the class, a girl is expected to perform in front of her classmates. A sense of anguish grips her as she withdraws behind the facade of her body. She agonizes over her performance and lack of social skills and awareness. She does not know how to effectively deal with her critics. Like many of my earlier prints, this piece was autobiographical in nature.
Susan Spencer Crowe 2023