Quotidian Shift: Q&A with Nancy Sausser

Nancy Sausser is an artist, curator, and writer living and working in the Washington, DC area. She holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture from the University of Washington, in Seattle, and a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art from Kenyon College. Her sculpture, executed primarily in low-fire ceramic, has been exhibited around the Washington, DC and Seattle areas and her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Fiber Arts Magazine, Washington Review, as well as numerous exhibition catalogs. She has been putting together exhibitions of contemporary art for over twenty-five years and is currently Exhibitions Director and Curator at McLean Project for the Arts in McLean, Virginia.

Quotidian Shift was on view at Hillyer on July 6-28, 2019.

Where does your inspiration for “exploring the conversation that exists between interior and exterior worlds” come from?

So many things can be looked at or experienced from an inside or outside perspective. I first started thinking about and exploring the many manifestations of this concept because, as a longtime maker of objects, I am naturally drawn to containers of all kinds, including vessels, boxes, and even the human body. I always seem to be most fundamentally interested in the container itself; even more than what may be inside of it. The process of making a sculpture calls for an awareness and investigation of both the inside and the outside of a piece and the ceramic medium is rooted in a history of utilitarian vessels. This inside/outside duality is everywhere, perhaps most profoundly expressed in the experience of inner awareness of our own thoughts and consciousness, and our outward experiences in the world. Everywhere I look I seem to find new ways to explore and express this idea.

As someone who wears multiple hats in the art world (curator, artist, writer) how do you find those disciplines overlap with one another and how do your other experiences inform the art you create?

Curating, writing and art-making are wonderfully and naturally symbiotic. Putting exhibitions together means that I am always looking at art, always thinking about art, and always talking to artists about their process. It’s very stimulating, both intellectually and visually. Curating is a very creative process itself, and since I work in the gallery I also get to spend a lot of time with an ever-changing array of art. So I have an opportunity to see deeply, which naturally feeds and sparks my own creative impulses. Writing about art necessitates very careful and deep thinking about the work I am writing about, which encourages me to try to apply the same standard of thoughtfulness to my own art. By being an artist, and specifically a sculptor, also informs my curatorial style and interests as well. Since I’m personally familiar with the process of making art, I tend to bring this to my understanding of the work I am showing and to the choices I make about which works I put together and how they are displayed. It’s really a wonderful combination of activities, each informing the other in ever-changing and sometimes unexpected ways.

In 2014 you completed a residency in Puebla, Mexico, and some of your current work references the tradition of Mexican wall niches– can you tell us more about your residency experience?

I had the good fortune to spend a month in Puebla, which is a beautiful city with amazing colonial architecture about two hours from Mexico City. It’s also the epicenter of the production of Talavera ceramics, traditionally colorful patterned pottery and tile work that is also has roots in both Spain and China. The city is literally filled with Talavera, with tiles covering walls, staircases and sidewalks everywhere you go. I spent countless hours exploring and walking while I was there; an opportunity to develop a deep appreciation for the tradition. I particularly loved finding the unexpected wall niches built into the architecture of the buildings, allowing for a pause, or to highlight a revered object or phrase. These were containers incorporated right into the buildings, and I was inspired by this tradition, and by the idea of the container as a space for reverence. One goes to a residency not only for time to work, but also to meet other artists and to experience a new place and make work while there. My time in Puebla was wonderful, pulling me out of my day to day and introducing me to new people, new sights, and new ideas.

You have over 25 years of experience working in contemporary art spaces. In what ways has your career impacted your personal artistic practice?

I think one of the most impactful ways my career has affected my own art has been the way I think about space. Choosing, spotting and arranging works in a gallery, putting them together in a way that helps the viewer see and understand the work better, making the air around the work enhance the work and the placement of a piece create interesting and informative conversations with the other pieces in the exhibit. These are all things that are a part of the vocabulary of curating. You notice how people move through the gallery, what they see first, and where they linger. Years of building and practicing these skills has definitely informed my own work and I think made it better than it would have been otherwise. These on-going lessons about the power of the space around the art to enhance, electrify and become part of the work have been very useful and have become a part of my art-making process. I also think getting to know and work with so many artists has been tremendously helpful to my own practice. It has exposed me to so many wonderful and individual ways of making, thinking about making and expressing ideas.