Artist's Statement

Susan Altman makes primarily mosaics, especially from discarded materials. She loves colors and building things, and likes her art to serve a function. A passionate environmentalist, she incorporates discarded and used materials into her work whenever possible: wood from construction projects, pots and pans, broken pottery, keys and hardware, discarded furniture, bottle caps, rocks, seashells, and once-loved toys. She makes wall hangings, free-standing sculptures, stepping stones and garden ornaments, and jewelry.
 
Susan finds joy in bringing art and community together. She has developed and produced multiple public art projects, including a 7 x 12 foot wall mosaic created by almost six hundred K-5 students in Medford over two weeks; a mixed-media wall piece designed and built by several middle-school students, a mosaic wall piece created by four families working together over four sessions, a utility switchbox mosaic, a bench to honor the retiring head of a preschool and mosaiced largely by preschool students, and a series of six stepping stones celebrating local native trees for installation in a public park in early 2022. She is currently working with Medford public school students ages 5-18 to create a large rainbow mosaic installation for the exterior of Medford High School. 

Susan is a board member of Arts Collaborative Medford, which is opening a community arts center this year that will include studios, performance and event space, classrooms, and offices. For seven years she served on the ArtsMedford (formerly the Medford Arts Center Inc.) board of directors, as president for two years, clerk for three, and nominating committee member for one. During this time she organized and facilitated many projects and events, prominently among them MARV the Medford Arts Resource Vehicle, which was launched in 2017 to bring art into local communities and served the community at over one hundred events through 2020. She has edited, written, and managed the ArtsMedford newsletter since 2015.