Susan Kae Grant
Susan kae Grant is an inventive and influential lens-based artist, educator, and early proponent of photographic book arts. Her work is collected and exhibited in museums, galleries and private collections.
With an interest in art and science, Grant uses the shadow as metaphor to create fabricated narratives that explore dreams, memory and the unconscious.
Grant has a long history of presenting lectures, workshops and exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally, including the United States, Canada, China, Europe, Australia, British Columbia, Africa, Guatemala, and Japan.
In 2018 she was named Cornaro Professor of Visual Art, Emerita at Texas Woman’s University where she served as head of Photography & Book Arts from 1981-2017.
Susan kae Grant in the studio
Creative Practice
Grant’s innovative studio practice and distinct personal vision represent one of the mediums more sustained and recognizable contributions to fabricated photography and book art.
Her ongoing touring immersive installation of Night Journey and her curated exhibition Photographic Book Art in the United States have traveled to over 30 venues between them.
Her limited edition artists’ books include Radioactive Substances, a tribute to Marie Curie for the Smithsonian Institution, and Shadowed Memory, created at the Visual Studies Workshop when she was artist in residence.
To create the images in her current series Night Journey, she photographs shadows of constructed scenarios with models and props in her Dallas studio using a 4x5 view camera with a digital Leaf back. The gestures and narratives in the images take inspiration from sleep laboratory research, dream recordings, memory and journal sketches.
The final print works are limited edition photographs printed on Hahnemüle 308 Rag, a 100% cotton museum-quality paper.
Conduit Gallery Exhibitions
Selected Exhibitions:
The Grace Museum, Abiline, TX
MTSU Baldwin Gallery, Murfreesboro, TN
Conduit Gallery, Dallas, TX,
Tyler Museum of Art, Tyler, TX
Lunder Arts Center, Cambridge, MA,
The Center for Photography at Woodstock, NY
International Photography Festival, Antigua, Guatemala
Lishui Photo Festival, Lishui, China
See+Gallery, Shanghai, China,
Keith Murdoch Gallery, State Library Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
Bonhams, Los Angeles, CA
Oakland University Art Gallery, Oakland, MI, 2014
Northern Arizona University Art Museum, Flagstaff, AZ
Conduit Gallery, Dallas, TX, 2012
Alan Avery Gallery, Atlanta, GA, 2009
Conduit Gallery, Dallas, TX, 2009
The Gallery at UT-Arlington, Arlington, TX, 2007
Thirty-Year Retrospective, McKinney Avenue Contemporary, Dallas, TX, 2007
Galerie BMG, Woodstock, NY, August 2006
ModernBook Gallery, Palo Alto, CA, 2006
Robert V. Fullerton Art Museum, San Bernardino, CA, 2005
The Light Factory, Charlotte, NC, 2003
New Mexico State University Art Gallery, Las Cruces, NM, 2003
John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI, 2002
Women & Their Work Gallery, Austin, TX, 2002
Houston Center for Photography, Houston, TX, 2001
The Anchorage Museum of Art and History, Alaska, 1997
Selected Collections
Arts of the Book Collection, Yale University, New Haven, CT
Boston Athenaeum, Boston, MA
Center For Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ
Columbia University, New York City, NY
Detroit Public Library Rare Book Room, Detroit, MI
Frito Lay Corporate Collection, Dallas, TX
Graham Nash Collection, Pasadena, CA
Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
Kresge Art Museum at Michigan State University, MI
Phoenix Public Library Rare Book Collection, Phoenix, AZ
Smith College Rare Book Collection, Northhampton, MA
Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.
Texas Instruments Corporate Collection, Dallas, TX
Texas Tech University, Rare Book Collection, Lubbock, TX
The J. Paul Getty Museum Artists' Book Collection, Malibu, CA
The International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House
The Minneapolis Art Institute, Minneapolis, MN
The New York Public Library Spencer Collection, NY
The Ruth and Marvin Sackner Collection, Miami Beach, FL
The School of the Art Institute Artist's Book Collection, Chicago, IL
The Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo, Japan
UCLA, Darling BioMedical Library Special Collections, Los Angeles, CA
Victoria & Albert Museum National Art Library, London, England
Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA
Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT