M 9-12, Th 5-6
Susan Belau received her M.F.A. in Printmaking from University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1999. She trained as a printer at Paulson Press in Berkeley, California, and has taught printmaking, drawing and design for 8 years. She received the Phelan Award for Excellence in Printmaking and been awarded fellowships at Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, California and Women’s Studio Workshop, Rosendale, New York. Susan joined the faculty at San Francisco State University in 2008.
Belau’s prints and works on paper begin with observational drawings that are then traced, re-traced, edited and reassembled. Out of this process springs the conceptual basis for the work: the experience of time, imperfections in observation, and the shifts in recording as stories are told and re-told.
Her subjects are plants and structures found in the domesticated natural world – the urban garden, a suburban yard or a city park. Subjects are selected for their shapes, their lines and divisions of space. Belau’s work focuses on the connection between the literal descriptions of interval—the spaces between branches, negative shapes, layers of ink—and the abstract and intangible notions of time, anticipation and moments lost.
Education
- M.F.A., University of Nebraska-Lincoln
- B.A., University of California Santa Cruz
