It is impossible to remember exactly the moment when things broke between the time before and the time of now. It felt like a slow progression over a short time. Compressed explosion.

For the first two weeks after the New York City shelter in place order on March 16th, 2020, I felt paralyzed with fear and anxiety. Fear that a breath of fresh air would make me sick with this virus ravaging New York City. And anxious that I would pass it to my husband, and he would die. Everything was urgent and unknown.

At some point I was compelled to go outside. Walking. Re-learning to breathe. For me, time spread, measured in the environment. Flashes of green, yellow, pink among the winter detritus. Rain drops huddled, frozen on buds. The shifting air temperature. The cloud arrangement mirrored in water among skyscrapers. The wind gusts. Watching a pair of red tail hawks mating ritual, soaring back and forth together on the updrafts in the architecture. The pink moon. Bird song. And the ever-grey light. I found a kind of known unknown comfort in the grey wet light. No one else was out. The silence.

I started to distill these solitary walks outside into my landscape works on canvas made on the roof of my building; afterward taking them back to the places they were born. I remember, it was April 21st, the day before Earth Day. I took a landscape out to Sheep Meadow. It was overcast. Not too windy. The birds were singing. It was peaceful. The soft pitter patter of rain washed the landscape as I lay breathing underneath it all. On April 30th a bed of cherry blossoms reflected the landscape I lay within it. May 4th, I washed and drew the wind at North Meadow, then danced at sunset on my roof, shrouded in the landscape, buoyed by that same wind. Another drizzly grey day, May 8th, I took a new landscape out to Sheep Meadow. All I saw was a person in an orange jacket followed by a person in a black jacket walking across a large expanse of green against the backdrop of New York City. I drenched it all in rain: rolling, laying, jumping, finally dragging the landscape across the grass. And then I was alone with the birds.

Since then, more and more I go out with my work to re-meet the city scape. I am grounded by the structure of the city landscape, time spreading out over the environment. I can depend on that. Through these interventions, I sustain myself and my husband. As afraid as I was about getting sick, I know that the air I breathe will keep me alive.

Susan Luss – 9 June 2020

“Home Sweet Home (And Other Suchness), Luss’ first solo exhibition, is a newly realized, site-specific installation for Lowe Mill. The title plays on the often-invoked idiom – the return to the comfort of home after an extended absence – revealing the artist’s interest in places and objects that activate unforeseen memories. Through “reverse excavation,” to use the artist’s words, Luss forges the archeological aspects of a place with her own biographical history. The resulting work investigates the disruptions of relocation, and on another level, the importance of finding safe spaces necessary to realize potential. Inventive and personal, the work in the exhibit is Luss’s response to places of her past that are now, through her artistic process, in her present.”

Elizabeth Saperstein — excerpt from essay accompanying exhibition.

Installation photos of my solo exhibition, Home Sweet Home (And Other Suchness) On view at Lowe Mill A&E, Huntsville, Alabama — November 14th 2018 through January 5th, 2019.

Works on canvas vary in size from 8 x 9 to 25 x 12 x 6 feet.
Works on paper vary in size from 5 x 5 to 22 x 30 inches.
Sculptural works in any medium vary in size from 4x 4 inches to 1 x 1 x 4 feet.

The grid as a structure, a foundation for creating a new space, but also as a disruptor of space. The grid is nomadic. It’s provisional, transitional, contingent.

An ongoing series:

I walked a block
Maybe two
More likely several miles
To find you.

#asphaltforensics

“Proof of Life”

Site responsive installation for : block 0 : alternative barter: a new method of exchange at b[x] space to create, Brooklyn, NY. Curated by Pia Coronel. June-July 2018

“It’s a Whole New World in Here”

Site responsive installation for This Is Not Here at The Old Pfizer Building, Brooklyn, New York May - June, 2018.

“The Purse”

Site responsive installation for Popular Culture is Where the Pedagogy Is at The Hole, New York. Curated by Jasmine Wahi. May-June 2016

Paper Light is an ongoing series of works on paper in response to shifting light and the architecture of space.

Works vary in size from 5 x 5 inches to 22 x 30 inches.

Is It Time? is a site responsive installation in conjunction with the 2016 COPE NYC Artist in Residence program at the Old Pfizer building in Brooklyn, culminating in the exhibition, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Reimagine - The 4 R's.

28 x 26 feet

90 Miles of Blue is a two part installation included in the group exhibition, "Blue", at Lowe Mill in Huntsville, Alabama. It was on view from September 1st through October 30th, 2017.

The exhibition was conceived of and curated by Karen Graffeo. The underlying concept was based on the idea of the blue of distance as put forth by Rebecca Solnit in A Field Guid to Getting Lost. 

COPE NYC 2017
Artist-in-Residence Program
Acumen Capital Partner LLC Building (The Pfizer Building)
630 Flushing Ave. 3rd Floor, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
October - December 2017

Fish Bones

A Collaborative Shadow Play Installation and Performance:

In the spirit of creative reuse, this installation of shadow play, spoken word, and music engaged participants in the construction and creation of a sea of fish using a variety of donated and collected materials. Culminating in a series of interactive performances and workshops, Fish Bones tells a story inspired by the Taino myth of how the sea began, speaking to how communities come together and support each other in the face of overwhelming circumstances. 

Fellow A.I.R. collaborators: Aubrey Roemer and Miguel Hernandez

Site responsive collaboration with Rich Vivenzio for Haverstraw RiverArts Festival

7 Hours in 26 Seconds is a site responsive installation included in the group exhibition, Bigger Bolder Better. 

The work is approximately 18 x 20 x 5 feet. Each colored gel shape was hand cut in response to the interior and exterior environment, then attached to the windows and activated by the sunlight as the earth rotated. 

The show was curated by Etty Yaniv, Jaynie Crimmins, and Christina Massey. It was on view in June of 2017 at 470 Vanderbilt, a Chashama Space to Present site.

Site responsive installation for Light Industrial Ecosystem at Garner Arts Center.

Site specific installation in Charlotte, VT