Susan Lea Hackett

Frank Bette Artist Member

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Susan Lea Hackett

Bio: Born in Southern California in 1948. Her mother was a master needleworker, and her grandmother an accomplished oil painter. She escaped to Northern California at the age of twenty and earned a BA in Practice of Art at UC Berkeley, with an emphasis on painting. After working for several years as an artist’s model, she entered a career in geriatrics, teaching various arts to frail elders. In 1984, she began making quilts, and received awards both locally and nationally for her art quilts. She teaches classes on quiltmaking and textile art through adult education, in arts centers, and various private venues. In recent years, she has returned to her roots in painting and drawing, working from a live model two to three times per week., and enjoys plein aire watercolor work. New directions include collage, mixed media, photo transfers, textile painting, and artist’s books. She currently lives in Alameda, California, and maintains a second home on the Stanislaus River in the high sierras. She is represented by the Frank Bette Center for the Arts in Alameda.

Artist’s Statement: My textile hangings are created using the technique of contemporary crazy piecing. In large works, the design surface is divided into areas and templates are made. Pieces of cloth are sewn together spontaneously until the piece is large enough to be cut with a template. Fabrics are always sewn together with seams, never layered, to preserve the integrity of the surface. In smaller works, no templates are used; the process is totally improvised. This technique allows me to respond directly to the cloth, using it as a painter uses pigment. Unexpected reflections and transparencies appear, forms are revealed in dialogue with fabric, and I continue to be surprised until the emergence of the finished piece.
I create my own fabrics outdoors using heliographic paints and natural objects such as leaves, rock, salt and sand, to create sun prints. The participation of nature creates a one-of-a-kind print which captures a moment and place in cloth. I also do mono prints, and often the two techniques are combined in several layers of paint on one piece. These original fabrics are combined with those painted or dyed by others; with commercial cottons, rayons, silks, and blends; and with recycled clothing and scavenged scraps to achieve textural variation. My subject matter derives from nature, the elements and spiritual forces which shape our world; the ecstasy of life seen at once as a whole and again in a myriad of tiny fragments. Future directions include images of the human body, incorporating life drawings, watercolors on cloth, collage, and photo transfers. This work expresses a time of inward reflection, coming to terms with my own health, ability, mobility, sexuality and mortality.

For more information on this artist please call 510-523-6957

or email us info@frankbettecenter.org