Susan Klein "Hoarding Her Feelings"

Susan Klein "Hoarding Her Feelings" 2025

Oil paint and underglaze on ceramic stoneware
Dimensions: 15x13x13 in
Unique
Includes certificate of authenticity 

Susan Klein is an artist living in Charleston, SC. She has shown both nationally and internationally, including I Should Have Been a Pair of Ragged Claws at the Wassaic Project (NY), A Window Scrubbed for the Moon at Asya Geisberg Gallery (NYC) and Volcano Lovers at Frontviews (Berlin). Klein is a 2020-2021 recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. Other awards include an Artist-in-Residence at the Dunedin School of Art in New Zealand, a Hambidge Center Residency, Watershed Center for Ceramics Art Residency, Wassaic Project Residency, residency at the International Studio and Curatorial Program, a full fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center, an Ox-bow Artist-in-Residence Summer Fellowship, an Otis College of Art and Design Summer Residency, and residency at Arteles Creative Research Center in Finland. She has written for The Coastal Post and was also a member and co-director of Tiger Strikes Asteroid Greenville. Klein received her MFA in 2004 from the University of Oregon, a BFA in 2001 from the University of New Hampshire, and studied art at NYU from 1997-99. She is an Associate Professor of Art and Chair of the Studio Art Department at the College of Charleston.

Artist Statement: 

My sculptures and paintings use a symbolic language to channel ideas of creative energy and the ritualistic utility of art. The sculptures act as devotional objects while the paintings are an incantation of the energetic spirit. Touch is venerated in this work; learning and making with one’s hands is held up as sacred and essential. I am interested in the desire for spiritual connection that I observe in contemporary culture, and how this often vague and unnamed longing mirrors sexual desire. Touch is distinctly earthly and bodily, while the spiritual is unbodied and untouchable. There is a wonderful tension between them. It is this space between that emerges in my paintings and sculptures.