Artist: Tina Suszynski
Year: 2020
Materials: Bronze and Stainless Steel
Dimensions: 68″ x 25″ x 25″
About Dependence
An amalgam of contradictions, from the contrast of the seasons to the divisions within communities, feeds my art practice. My youth in a resort town was dominated by polarity; summers of chaos as tourists trampled everything, human and nature alike, with acts of self-indulgence. With the onset of fall, seas calmed, plant life soothed, horizons hailed freedom. Later, when I became a city dweller, I was stupefied by a year-round cacophony of humanity, constant motion, horizons obscured by buildings and plastic trees. Moving west brought temporary solace with its celebration of individualism and resilience and its broad, open skies, but the trampling continues. People are obliterating the natural world while attempting to embrace and appreciate it. Community responsibility is too often lost to gluttony and self-interest. I use plants, clay and extreme heat to portray destruction in search of beauty as well as the beauty of destruction. I am looking for the calm I once knew, turning to nature to assuage my concern for the environment and each other. With Dependence, I ask the viewer to consider dichotomies. Are these abstracted torsos, rounded and closed off, teetering, one over the other, engaged in a perilous attempt to own the sun, to be at the top, or is this a supportive interaction between members of a healthy community? Do we displace nature for our own purposes whatever the cost, or do we acknowledge our reliance on a healthy planet?
About Tina Suszynski
Tina Suszynski attended Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA, earning a B.A. in International Studies after spending her junior year studying in Paris, France. She then earned a J.D. from Loyola University of Chicago. She has taken art classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Evanston Art Center, the Art Students League of Denver, and the Anderson Ranch Arts Center. Tina’s instructors have included Peter Durst, Robin Hopper, Eric Jensen, Jun Kuneko, Benjamin Lira, Stephen Mickey, Rick Parsons, Bruce Price, Martha Russo, Paul Soldner, Stan Welsh, and Lana Wilson.
Tina attended A.I.R. Vallauris, France, as a resident artist and has put together an Artist-Invites-Artists Residency for the summer of 2019 at the Red Lodge Clay Center in Montana. In 2019, she became a member of Artnauts, a socially and politically based art collective that shows internationally.
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