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The New Mexico Fiber Arts Directory Susan A Christie: Founder, Editor, Publisher... Companion website to The New Mexico Artist Directory WB (Bill) Brown: Founder, Editor, Publisher |
Look for NMFAD's ad in the
Sierra County Artists Directory
2018 Volume 16.
Distributed throughout NM
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A B O U T S U S A N
Originally from Minneapolis, MN, Susan holds a B.A. degree in Cultural Anthropology and Art from the University of Minnesota. She has also completed national and international post-graduate studies in multiple disciplines. Susan has been an exhibiting artist and educator for over 40 years. She has owned and directed her own galleries and open-to-the public studios. Her gallery documentation files and Christie Family history are part of the permanent collection at the Minnesota Historical Society. Susan is also in the permanent collections of private individuals and public institutions such as the New Mexico Capitol Art Collection in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Susan also has a background in consulting and curation, writing reviews, exhibition text, biographical text, and book-length projects. Her love of textiles and fiber began in grade school as she constructed her own garments. Running her fingers thru the stacks of fabric at Amluxsens, Minneapolis's premier fabric shop on Nicollet Avenue, left her with life long addiction to the tactile nature of fiber and papers.
Susan managed a fiber/textile workroom for a Minneapolis business which was staffed by the most amazing women, many of them working toward a degree in the textile department at the University of Minnesota. Subsequently she partnered with one of the women to create a textile silkscreen studio which designed and produced Minnesota themed items for the wholesale to retail market - represented by a professional woman at the Minneapolis Merchandise Market.
Susan opened her first gallery in the warehouse district in Minneapolis in 1982. Tho eclectic in scope, Susan was the first public art space which catered to the fiber artists, many who were attending the University of Minnesota in the Design Department. She was the editor of the Surface Design Minnesota Newsletter. Her downtown gallery's highlight exhibition was titled "Nuts on Bolts" – a response to the endless efforts of the fiber artists as they designed and constructed their works – Nuts on Bolts, Yardage Before the Finished Product focused on just that. The large, artist sourced, catalog for the exhibition is in the Permanent Collection of the Minnesota Historical Society.
More recently Susan was instrumental in creating the 36 Artist Fiber Exhibition at RioBravoFineArt Gallery in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico in the fall of 2014, Fiberart 2014, a Mixed Bag. The exhibit presented artists from 14 New Mexico communities ranging from Taos to Las Cruces, plus participants from New York, California, and Minnesota.
In 2014, at the request from the Las Cruces Museum of Art, Susan began the two year planning process to produce
a large scale fiber related exhibition, Transforming Space – Transforming Fiber, which opened November 4, 2016. Susan, along with the nine invited artists, the museum staff and her husband Bill Brown, worked on all aspects of the exhibit. She and her husband Bill Brown also built the exhibition website. This exhibition was the culmination of Susan's life long dream of producing a fiber related large scale installation exhibit.
The New Mexico Fiber Arts Directory brings together Susans' over 40 years of experience:
"I have walked the road and done my time exhibiting my own work, large and small-scale installations, curating, writing, teaching, volunteering, art fairs, finding gallery representation, operating brick and mortar galleries and shops, dealing with inventory, putting on shows, leading workshops, wholesaling, selling online, dusting, sweeping, traveling, success, overwhelming odds, coordinating, having faith, creative thinking, rising to the occasion, good friends and collaborators and a large helping of magic."
