Artist and Educator

'Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.' Leonardo da Vinci

After ten years as an elementary teacher on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and in Colorado Springs, Susan shifted directions and earned a BFA with honors from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. She continued on to her master's studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California in Theology, concentrating her studies in art and religion. In addition to her interdisciplinary thesis work in early Renaissance art, she's studied under two master iconographers learning the ancient practice of icon writing.

As an editorial illustrator, Susan’s clients include Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions, Cricket, Cobblestone and Faces Magazines (Carus Publishing Group), Simon and Schuster, Nursing Magazine, World Vision, National Council of Teachers of English, Child Welfare League of America, St Casimir Church, and illustrations and artwork for private commission.

Although trained as an Illustrator, Susan has returned to her love for fine art, incorporating assemblage and mixed media into her personal work. Some of her work includes assemblage using found objects and glass mosaic. Susan was also commissioned to design and install the donor wall for the ‘Stone Upon Stone’ campaign at St Casimir Catholic Parish in Lansing. Her threaded landscapes turn familiar and unfamiliar sights into embroidered landscapes. More recently, she has experimented with abstract mixed media pieces using acrylic, gouache and collage.

Susan is a professor of foundation art and design at Lansing Community College in Lansing Michigan. During her graduate studies, Susan met her husband, Cassian. They now live in mid-Michigan with their son and daughter.

In her vocation as an artist and an educator, Susan finds her mind, her hand and her spirit at work together.