January 11 - 30, 2025
From Dock Space Gallery:
“Susan Budge is an American sculptor working in clay, bronze and stainless steel with influences from Biomorphism and Surrealism. She earned a BFA from TTU, MA from UHCL and MFA from UTSA.
Budge’s work is in permanent collections at the Smithsonian, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, the Fuller Craft Museum, the San Antonio Museum of Art, the San Angelo Museum of Art, the Art Museum at Northern Arizona State University, the Art Museum of South Texas, the New Orleans Museum of Art. Public Installations include: Brackenridge Park, The Kemp Sculpture Garden, the Locke Surls Center for Art and Nature, Heights Blvd., Museum of Biblical Arts. Her work has been in hundreds of exhibitions and is in private/corporate collections in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Australia and Greece.
Awards include Texas Artist of the Year for TALA, 2004, finalist for Texas State Artist in 2018, Best of Show and merit awards in numerous exhibitions.
Her teaching career began with Artist in Education Grants from Texas Commission on the Arts. She was Head of Ceramics and Art Metals at San Antonio College 1995-2015. As a tenured professor, she earned a NISOD excellence in teaching award and established an endowed ceramics scholarship fund. Budge maintains an active studio practice in her rural studio near Houston.
“Touching clay for the first time was my epiphany. This work is the culmination of over forty years of exploration in my favorite media. The tactile quality is sensuous, immediate and gratifying. The duality of clay has engaged me as I explored the paradoxes of life: Soft/hard, fluid/static, plastic/rigid, vulnerable/strong. Fired ceramics can be pulverized to dust, or last thousands of years.My preferred method of creating is spontaneous, as likely was the case of my ancient fellow artists. By working intuitively, we allow subconscious thoughts to surface. According to André Breton, we “resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality”, or surreality. With the Surrealists, I celebrate the unexpected, the element of surprise, and paradox. My abstract forms have been characterized as celebrating the female reproductive system while the ceramic hard hats have been associated with protruding pregnant bellies or voluptuous breasts. Like Kandinsky, I imagine things having a secret soul that is silent though it speaks. Art imitates life and life is fulfilled through art…with my work, aspects of life continue to be revealed through Dreams, Visions, & Desires.”
Opening Reception is Saturday, Jan 11th, 2025 from 6-9pm as part of the Second Saturday Artwalk in the Lone Star Art District. 107 Lone Star Blvd, San Antonio, TX 78204. The exhibition is up through January and the gallery is open by appointment. Call Bill FitzGibbons at 210-723-3048 to view outside of the reception times.”
Reception: January 11, 2025 | 6–9 pm
107 Lone Star Blvd.
San Antonio, 78204 Texas
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