In Susanna Starr's newest work, she uses a frottage technique - rubbing pastel on paper to absorb a visual image of a vintage handkerchief from its purely physical form. More than a recording of surface texture, the resulting image suggests a fluid state of time between past and present, and a place between the physical and what is felt. Combining drawing, printmaking, and sculpture, the final piece is often cutout - a new entity that is distinctly tangible yet vaporous. Alluding to their original forms as personal functional objects, these textiles have delicately crossed the boundary from object to subject.
A multimedia artist, Starr's work combines painting, drawing and sculpture. Starr uses color and textiles as both subject and material. She employs simple and transformative building processes of saturation and absorption to create porous objects that allow her to see into and through them, revealing new or unexpected relationships between physicality and perception.
Starr's work has been exhibited widely in the United States and in Spain, the Netherlands, and Germany. Her work is in the collections of The Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY, Moelis & Company, New York, NY, Art in Embassies Program, US Department of State, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Arts & Design (public commission), New York, NY, Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL, The Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL. Starr earned a BFA, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD and a MFA, Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT.