For over twenty-five years Suzanne has retrieved (sometimes rather dangerously) flattened scraps of metal from Dallas streets. Objects caught her eye because of their interesting texture, their colors and creases, or simply because she thought they looked "cool." Recently they’ve become a new subject of interest in her drawings. 

 

“I think about the early days of my art classes in college. The models with the 'perfect looks, perfect bodies,' etc., were pure torture to draw in my opinion. They were downright boring, both in the task of drawing and the final result. But bring in a model with creases, folds and sags in the skin, scars attained from life in general, well these were my kind of people! I’ve realized that those unique characteristics in the models I loved to draw was really not that different from the textures of flattened metal objects I collected that had gone through amazing transformations naturally after 'living' in the streets.”

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As her obsessive collecting continued, some of the salvaged objects lovingly adorned her office walls at UT Southwestern. They became popular with clients and staff, some of whom brought Suzanne gifts of flattened and aged pieces they had rescued from the streets themselves.

 

Scientific collecting and recording of shards of pottery, tools, and other everyday items has always been important in our understanding of civilizations prior to ours. In some ways, the collecting of present day metal “artifacts” from the streets is not unlike those of the archeologist collecting and evaluating physical evidence of a life before. These collected objects reveal what we eat, drink, our use of convenient tools in a can, and other ordinary activities. They represent a very small point in time and location of one person’s life as a consumer and their story that we will never know.

 

Suzanne’s new series of drawings is titled "Artifacts.” They are not only a study in transformed objects through age and abuse, but she imagines “what if” these discarded metal objects are found hundreds of years from now. These are our artifacts, common, everyday items describing and defining our lives, but also confirming to generations to come our excessive waste and lack of respect for our environment.

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All drawings in this series are on 12"x15" Stonehenge paper, which is 100% cotton and acid-free. Each piece is sized to fit into a 16"x20" frame with mat.