Artist Susan Bach

Arts on Douglas | alt_space gallery
Gallery hours: T-F 10-5 and Sat 10-4
123 Douglas Street,
New Smyrna Beach, FL 32168
386-428-1133

Susan Bach

Susan Bach works with a traditional craftsman’s material, clay, in a nontraditional way, Bach creates highly patterned, decorative lamps, vases, and functional ware.  Each piece is fashioned from white earthenware and finished with lustrous glazes. All of her work is hand-painted original and one-of-a-kind. 

She was educated at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, and Penland School of Crafts, NC. Bach has been a full-time studio artist since 1981.  She has exhibited in galleries, museums, and art exhibitions throughout the country.  Her work is in many private and corporate collections as well as the permanent collections of the City of Orlando, Valencia Community College, and the Maitland Art Center.

In fifth-grade art class, we got to make something out of clay so I made a little, black glazed cat. It was something I never forgot. Then on the last day of my senior year of high school, one of the teachers pulled a potter’s wheel out of the corner of the classroom, sat down, and threw a pot. Magic! I was hooked.

My father was an illustrator and wildlife artist (Tom Beecham) so I've always drawn or sculpted on pots. In the seventies I primarily worked in Raku, incising shapes and imagery and glazing in color. I had some instructors in college that helped me find the best glazes and color palette for my work. The stress and liabilities involved in working with the raku process led me to switch to terra cotta, but I continued to work with surface design, primarily hand building. With a background in drawing and painting, I liked working on square/rectangular forms as it was similar to working on canvas. Eventually Disney World contacted me about doing some work for one of their shops in what was then Disney Village. They wanted ceramics with bright colors, so I switched to white earthenware. I continued making slab-built forms up to 30" tall until the recession in 2008. At that time, it became difficult to sell large format pottery. I also discovered underglaze and slip trailing bottles with tips small enough to draw fine details. Since I have always been a doodler, I started doodling on small pots and plates.  This eventually led to the black and white patterned work I create today.