About the Artist

Suzanne Stumpf has received wide recognition for both her sculptural and functional ceramic creations. She was selected as a 2017 Niche Award Finalist in both the ceramic sculpture and functional ceramics categories as well as a 2013 Niche Award Finalist in ceramic sculpture. In 2019, she was named an Artist of the Year by the Cambridge Art Association and won First Prize at the Legacy 4 Art Exhibition in North Easton. That same year, she was selected for an Open Studio Residency at Haystack Mountain School of Craft. In 2021, her sculptures received Best in Show at the Winter National Art Show in Duxbury, MA, and Honorable Mention awards at the State of Clay (national juried exhibition sponsored by the Lexington Arts and Crafts Society) and the ArtsWorcester Biennial.

Her interactive sculptures and other work have been included in the books 500 Ceramic Sculptures: Contemporary Practice, Singular Works (Lark Books, 2009); 500 Raku: Bold Explorations of a Dynamic Ceramics Technique (Lark Books, 2011); and Humor in Craft (Schiffer Publishing, 2012). Her sculptures have been featured in the 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, and 2019 Sculpture Calendars, published by the International Ceramic Artists Network. In 2013, her work was featured in the European magazine, Ceramics Now. Ceramics Monthly magazine named her one of their nine Emerging Artists in 2005. Her interactive sculptures have also been featured multiple times in Artscope, New England’s culture magazine.

Her work has been included in numerous national and international juried art and ceramics shows from across the US to Bucharest, Hungary, including six times at the National Prize Art Show in Cambridge, MA, three times at the Potters Council International Show, four times at the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts ceramics biennials, and at an invitational exhibition at the Fuller Craft Museum (2015). Among many other accolades, she received three awards in national juried shows in 2017, including the First Place prize in sculpture/3D at the 62nd Annual Arts Festival of the South Shore Arts Center. In 2018, one of her interactive sculptures was awarded Honorable Mention in Sculpture and Viewers Choice prize at the Winter National Art Show in Duxbury.

Also a professional musician, Suzanne is Faculty Emerita at of Wellesley College where she taught flute and chamber music for over three decades. She is co-Artistic Director and flutist for the period instrument chamber ensemble Musicians of the Old Post Road, winner of the Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society. The group also has garnered programming awards from Chamber Music America and the US-Mexico Fund for Culture, and has seven commercial CD recordings.

Artist Statement

My ceramic sculptures are intended to inspire reflection and introspective contemplation on a broad array of subjects spanning from the fragility and degradation of our environment, to the extraordinary beauty of the natural world, to sociological questions and concerns that are part of the challenges of the human condition. My first career and ongoing work as a professional musician contributes undercurrents to my work as a visual artist. One result has been my interest in creating multi-component, “interactive” sculptures that allow for innumerable permutations of the experience of the work, such as would be possible in performances of a musical composition. For these works, the viewer is urged to participate in rearranging the parts, resulting in a variety interpretations of the work. This possibility - and the invitation to touch - deepen the meditative/reflective experience of the viewer.

My sculptures are often complex and time-intensive, from conceptualization, to engineering the techniques and steps needed, to their execution. I work primarily in porcelain, finding its surface to be a receptive material for the broad array of surface techniques and textures I use. I also enjoy the challenge of porcelain clay as my primary visual arts medium, experiencing how its distinctive properties push and stretch my technique and engineering skills, benefiting both my personal and artistic growth.