Susie Ganch & Venetia Dale featured in Washington Post
Susie Ganch (b. 1971) is an artist currently living in Richmond, VA. She received her BS and MFA from University of Wisconsin-Madison. Ganch is currently Associate Professor and Head of the Metal Program for the Department of Craft and Material Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is also the Director of Radical Jewelry Makeover, an international jewelry mining and recycling project that travels throughout the United States and abroad. A 2015 recipient of the Peter S. Reed Foundation Grant, Ganch’s work is featured in the 2015 exhibitions Material Fix (Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan WI), RUBBISH (Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee WI), and CRAFTED: Objects in Flux (Museum of Fine Arts Boston, MA). Her work has been acquired by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and her 2014 exhibition TIED (Visual Arts Center of Richmond, VA) was chosen as an Art Forum Critics’ Pick. Ganch has exhibited both nationally and internationally in such shows as Unexpected Pleasures (Design Museum, London, England, and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia), Heat Exchange (Shemer Art Center and Museum, Phoenix, AZ, and Kunstmuseen der Stadt Erfurt, Galerie Waidspeicher im Kulturhof Krönbacken, Erfurt, Germany), Surface and Substance (Contemporary Applied Arts and Electrum Gallery, London, England and Ruthin Craft Centre, Wales), and Evolution and Imagination (Cameron Museum, NC).
Artist Statement
The social implications of visual and material culture deeply interest me. I am invested in the fields of craft and art because as material culture, they suggest cultural histories, beliefs, values, and ideas that may contradict or inform written history. I believe in studio-based practices because they enable artists to interrogate ideas in ways that are researched and critical, yet speculative and open to a range of often unexpected outcomes. My own studio practice is in many ways discipline specific, and is rooted in an examination of jewelry and luxury goods as its subject. I am interested in the possibilities of working within the conditions that frame the discipline of Jewelry & Metalsmithing, and in mining the history, objects and subjects embedded in the field as content. What interests me about working within these limitations are the possibilities for reconsidering ideas within the field in an expanded way. While my subject is discipline specific, my research is a synthesis of ideas from a range of disparate disciplinary inquiries, enabling me to consider specific ideas from an expansive vantage point.
