Meet Susan Bradford

1. Please give us three words to describe your creations?

Intricate.  Colorful.  Inspirational.  Soothing.  Oops, that’s four words.

2.. what can we look forward to you creating for this sale?

Three new basket series.  Seagrass baskets with beads.  Modeled on the Native American philosophy that “every bead is a prayer.”  Coiled baskets that are seagrass over wire.  I’ve been working on these for years, but wasn’t ready to show them.  Wire baskets.  Same thing.  These span several years of work, but I needed enough of them to make it look cohesive.

3. what about this particular art/craft makes you feel passionate and excited? 

 Even though I haven’t done a new mandala in over a year, I still connect with their messages, and feel connected when I look at them.  Hopefully others feel the same.  And I just love making baskets.  I can get lost for hours when I’m weaving.  I feel that it is so healing for me to do them and that lends them power and presence.  To me, they are little totems.

 4. when you are not making art, where are you most likely to be?

Spending time outside when the weather allows.  Working on the house.

5. do you have one quote or saying that you are living by these days? 

I just read this quote in Art in America the other day.  Though I can’t say that I’m living by it, it struck me as inspirational and timely.  It is by an African American artist name of Leslie Hewitt.  She says, “Like many artists, I’m always working to find and continually refine a form of address, one that will aid in developing an idea from an immaterial status in my mind to a material existence as art.  The process often starts out incongruent and irrational, and then goes through stages of logic.  This imposed logic comes from my desire for structures that can help make sense of the chaotic nature of living.”