In Brief
Sue Sommers makes paintings, book art, monoprints and etchings. She lives on a cattle ranch in the Upper Green River Valley near Pinedale, Wyoming.
Education
University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming MFA, Painting 1992
School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois BFA, Printmaking 1982
Honors and Awards
2011 United States Artists Project Page, "Pipeline to Miami" successfully launched and funded. • Trade Show Incentive Program Grant, Wyoming Business Council • Jentel Artist Residency Program, Banner, Wyoming
2010 "Hydrodynamics" (2009) accepted by Wyoming Legislative Artwork Donation Program. Painting will hang permanently in capitol building at Cheyenne. • Children Looking Back (series of watercolor portraits) receives Honorable Mention at the Individual Artist Fellowship Awards sponsored by the Wyoming Arts Council. Jurors: Sue Johnson, Mark Klett, Kate Budd.
2009 - 2011 Individual Artist Professional Development Grants, Wyoming Arts Council
1999 Visual Arts Fellowship, Wyoming Arts Council
Jurors: Peter Frank, Olivia Parker, Boris Bally
Solo Exhibits
2011 Sister and Brother, Art on Armitage, Chicago, Illinois. • Children Looking Back, ARC Gallery, Chicago, Illinois
2009 A Certain Altitude: Unbound Landscapes from the Wind River Range, Esther and John Clay Fine Arts Gallery, Laramie County Community College, Cheyenne, Wyoming.
2008 Beyond What the Eye Can See, Community Fine Arts Center, Rock Springs, Wyoming.
2008 Inspired by the Wind River Range, Center for the Arts, Jackson, Wyoming.
2007 New Landscape Paintings, Sublette County Library, Pinedale, Wyoming.
2000 Open Book, book art installation and workshop at Business of Art Center, Manitou Springs, Colorado.
1994 Dolls and Puppets for a New Passion Play, Artemisia Gallery, Chicago, Illinois.
Selected Projects
Ongoing Pipeline Art Project, group of contemporary Wyoming artists seeking to further their art careers in the wider world while maintaining Wyoming residency. www.pipelineartproject.com
Nov. 29 - Dec. 4, 2011 Pipeline Art Project exhibited at Red Dot Fair Miami, Booth A103.
2005-2010 Sublette County Sexual Assault and Family Violence Task Force: Art Auction Fundraiser. Annual donor and auction emcee for this important fund drive in Pinedale, Wyoming.
1998-2000 Bat Wings Are Night Things (Murcielagos: Amigos Vuelan de Noche), with environmental artist Lynne Hull, trans. by Ana Arias Terry. Educational comic book and poster about the importance of bats to agriculture and the ecosystem; for distribution as a free classroom teaching aid in Mexico. With scientific assistance from Michele Eveleyn and David Stiles of Stanford University; funding from the U.S. Mexico Fund for Culture, Fonda Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, the Rockefeller Foundation and Fundación Cultural Bancomer.
1994-96 Live Turkeys, Karmic Book of the Wild West, Editor, publisher and designer of photocopied zine. Five issues.
1993-94 Cattle/Text Interaction: A Project for Sublette County, Wyoming, Grant writer and collaborator for public art performance (inscribing a local pioneer ranchwoman’s journal entry on 56 pregnant cows in Boulder, Wyoming); travelling exhibit of video and photographs. Supported by a 1993 New Forms: Regional Initiative grant to Kunstwaffen Art Group, Pinedale, Wyoming.
In the collections of
The Wyoming Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources
Laramie County Community College, Health Sciences Building, Cheyenne, Wyoming
Sublette County Library, Pinedale, Wyoming
Marbleton-Big Piney Clinic, Marbleton, Wyoming
Community Fine Arts Association, Rock Springs, Wyoming
Numerous private purchasers