"Reflections" by Susan Grabel

About

“The pandemic landed, fracturing my sense of connectedness and purpose,” Grabel recalls. “Through Reflections, I am trying to recalibrate: to get in touch with a deeper level of being; to walk with the emptiness and trauma of our lives and find meaning in that journey and in our interconnectedness with nature.”

"Reflections," presents new figurative cast-paper sculptures, collagraphs, collages and woodcuts that reflect her trademark aesthetic, an ongoing translation from ceramics. In this exhibition the artist returns observers to the still, human form as a subject who continues to move and appear within both restricted and limitless environments. Anonymous portraits and figures moving forward, along with different shades of dormant trees, work together to transform the process of confinement into a motif.

Susan Grabel grew up in Brooklyn and is based in Staten Island, New York. Grabel completed her studies at Brooklyn College and the Brooklyn Museum Art School in 1963 and 1964.  From 1965 to 1967 she studied ceramics at California College of the Arts. Her debut solo show occurred in 1969 at Pace College Gallery in New York City.  Since the 1970s, Susan has been very involved with fusing both feminist and social issues into her sculpted forms. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s the artist was active in the figurative co-op gallery movement that took place in Soho. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s the artist was active in the figurative co-op gallery movement that took place in Soho. She showed at Prince Street Gallery through the mid 1980's. She has exhibited her work at galleries and museums across the country and  currently shows at Ceres Gallery.