The Good Hart Artist Residency program hosted the first artist for 2018, Susan Moss from Durango, Colorado. During her residency, Susan collaborated with the Women’s Resource Center of Northern Michigan to provide an art workshop for staff. Participants created a work of art using a repeated writing technique that answers the questions, “what do you hope for” and “why do you care”. The individual creations were placed together to form a mosaic. 

Susan Moss has a Masters of Fine Arts in painting and drawing from the University of Nebraska. She has been drawing since a child. Much of her work has focused on large-scale drawings that explore domesticity, memory, and the ordinary as recurring themes. Several years ago she took up the study of historic and contemporary textiles and began using stitch, especially hand embroidery, as a way of drawing. Her work has been exhibited regionally and nationally in over eighty venues. Moss teaches contemporary textile art and all levels of drawing in the Department of Art and Design at Fort Lewis College in Durango, CO.

Susan’s art work involves stitched marks where lines meander, coalesce, or nervously bob across the surface, describing a world where everyday objects, vegetation, and birds reside (or die) together. These hand-stitched drawings emerge from a desire to draw with thread, to locate a drawing aesthetic in textile work, capturing the sense of immediacy and improvisation associated with drawing. They also explore connections between daily life and the natural world, at times collapsing distinctions between inside and out. 

Susan Moss is the first of five artists that will participate in the Good Hart Artist Residency Program this year. The residency program provides visual artists and writers from diverse backgrounds and experiences with space to create and time to immerse themselves in their work and in the scenic landscapes of Northern Michigan. Through partnerships with local nonprofits such as the Women’s Resource Center, the Good Hart Artist Residency provides opportunities for the community to meet artists, see their work, and engage them in conversation.

The Good Hart Artist Residency is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to connect artists and writers from around the world with the local community to inform, educate and empower people through art in the natural beauty of Northern Michigan. The artist residency program is funded through private donations and a grant from the Petoskey-Harbor Springs Area Community Foundation. For more information on the selected artists for 2018 and the Good Hart Artist Residency program please see our website at goodhartartistresidency.org or contact the Executive Director Susan Klco at [email protected].