Our next Artist You Need To Know is Susan Bee.
She is an American painter, editor, and book artist as well as being co-editor and co-founder of M/E/A/N/I/N/G with (previously featured AYNTK) Mira Schor. This is an “art publication for dissenting viewpoints” that has existed in both print and online form since 1986.
Speaking of Bee’s artwork for ARTFORUM, Stephen Maine has stated it is a “distinctive stylistic blend of folk art and pastoral psychedelia.”
From a statement she shared with the Brooklyn Museum in conjunction with a solo exhibition of her work, Bee offered the following about her art and ideas :
“My artwork, both painting and artist’s books, examines and questions gender roles and the portrayal of women in popular culture. As an artist, I believe strongly in the role of the imagination and the importance of poetry, humor, irony, memory, and fantasy in art. I also believe in idiosyncratic, individualistic, and eccentric art making.
My education in feminism began in 1969, when I went to Barnard College. My college years were filled with actions against the Vietnam war and the emergence of the feminist, black power and gay rights movements. There were almost no women art teachers at Barnard. So I looked outside of college for role models. I had the example of the art of my mother, painter Miriam Laufer.
In graduate school at Hunter from 1975 to 1977 there were also no women art teachers. So I went to panels at A.I.R., the women’s coop gallery formed in 1972, and heard Ana Mendieta, Mary Beth Edelson, Nancy Spero, and others. From 1979 to 1980 I worked as an editor at Women Artists News.”
She was born in New York City in 1952. As previously mentioned, Bee has a B.A. from Barnard College and an M.A. in Art from Hunter College : she has also taught at the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, University of Pennsylvania (2012-2018), been a visiting professor at Pratt Institute (2014 – 2015), a lecturer at the the School of Visual Arts, MFA in Art Criticism and Writing, 2005-2014 and held the position of Artist-Teacher at Vermont College in their MFA in Visual Art program.
Bee has published a number of artist’s books with Granary Books : these have often been collaborations with poets and include Bed Hangings (with Susan Howe), A Girl’s Life (with Johanna Drucker), The Burning Babe and Other Poems (Jerome Rothenberg), and Log Rhythms and Little Orphan Anagram (both with Charles Bernstein). She has also produced nine artist’s books. Among these are Off-World Fairy Tales (2020), Fabulas Feminae (2015), Entre (2009) and The Invention Tree (2012).
She was awarded Fellowships at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts twice (2002 and 1999) and Yaddo Fellowships in both 2001 and 1996. In addition, she has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts as well. In 2014, Susan Bee was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship
Her artwork is included in many public and private collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Getty Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, Yale University, Clark Art Institute, New York Public Library, and Harvard University Library.
A more detailed listing of her exhibitions and accomplishments can be viewed here.
“The decision to follow a feminist path in art has never been easy. Being political and announcing your difference is not the easiest way to proceed in the art world. That’s what makes maintaining an openly feminist space, a continuing challenge. I think it’s important that these spaces exist, even as women artists have made significant inroads into the mainstream. We still need a place of our own. Feminist issues remain inescapable for me in all aspects of my life. I hope the future of women’s art and art making will be strong, participatory, empowering, and inclusive.”
You can see much more of her artwork here.