Susan Knight

Omaha-based paper and installation artist, Susan Knight, is a Michigan native.  From 2000 she lived and worked in the summers in New York City for a decade.  During that time she devoted exclusive attention to the natural world to distill the structures and systems found in nature into pattern compositions in two and three dimensions, and site-sensitive installations.  

Her work was shown twice at Artpize, Grand Rapids, MI, The Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE, The Kaneko, Omaha, NE, The Museum of Nebraska Art, Kearney, NE, The Sheldon Art Museum, Lincoln, NE, The Dubuque Museum of Art, Dubuque, IA, and The Plains, Art Museum, Fargo, ND.

Her work was twice featured in SciArt Magazine and was reviewed in Sculpture Magazine and in the Smithsonian Magazine.  It also appears in the book, Art Inspired by Science: Imagining The Natural World, by Robert Louis Chianese.

Knight is a recipient of a Nebraska Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship.  She was awarded art-science residencies at AS IF Center, High Cove, NC, The Colorado Art Ranch and The Nature Conservancy Land/Water residency, Ragdale Foundation, Lake Forest, IL, and the International School of Art, Montecastello di Vibio, Italy.  She earned a BFA in art from Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, IN, and attended The University of Notre Dame, The Glassell School of Art, Houston, and The School of the Chicago Art Institute.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I distill the structures and systems found in nature into pattern compositions in two and three dimensions, and site-sensitive installations. 

Most of my focus is on water and the land that holds it. Theoretical and existential aspects of water and the role it is continually playing in our planet’s evolution through millenniums become the grist for my visual creations. I look for inspiration in surface water and unseen water deep in the earth. News stories and scientific data about environmental water issues also inspire my work. 

My primary tool is an Xacto knife. With it I hand cut, fold, incise, sculpt, stretch, and tie paper, plastic, Mylar and Tyvek. The act of cutting continually fills me with energy and ideas. The physicality of cutting makes me feel like Zorro.