Susan Schwake is an artist, art educator, author and curator. Her passion for teaching art for over 20 years has found her working in diverse settings such as private and public schools, community organizations, programs for medically fragile children, special needs agencies, summer camps, intergenerational facilities, libraries, and her own little art school to thousands of people. Most recently she has taken her classroom online. Rainer Schwake produced the new series of e-courses called: Art Class including courses in Painting, Mixed Media, Printmaking and Hand-building with Clay. Each year Susan celebrates her student’s work – both children and adults - in exhibits twice a year at the local library gallery.
Susan works with diverse groups of people making art. She was hired to organize and create a permanent exhibition of children's art, involving more than one hundred local children. The children created the artwork for a new children’s wing in the local library. She also was chosen to direct a similar project with four hundred people in an intergenerational setting for a new multi-agency facility. This process-oriented program was designed to bring the staff, families, and clients more closely together through the process of making art together and was permanently displayed in the facility.
Following the release of her first three books the Art Lab for Kids series - Susan continues to offer workshops and programs to parents, teachers at universities, art studios, community organization, public and private schools. Her fourth book: Art for All Seasons, published by Two Little Birds is due out November 1st 2014. This book offers a curriculum to be used all year around and each lesson is inspired by the natural world and a contemporary artist.
She exhibits her own artwork in galleries in the United States and Europe. Susan has been juried public art exhibitions, creating large-scale, site-specific outdoor works. She has curated over 80 compelling contemporary exhibitions to date in her own gallery of hundreds of national and international artist’s work. She curates a rotating gallery in her city’s hospital and has worked with many corporations installing original artwork from her gallery’s stable of artists.
Susan works alongside her husband Rainer at artstream studios in New Hampshire. Together they collaborate daily within each facet of their creative business. Rainer holds a masters degree in Design from Farholschule, Muenster Germany and has created award winning websites and print materials for companies in a wide range of sectors. Art for All Seasons features Rainer’s layout and design, including over 400 photographs that the couple styled together and photographed. They work together creating exhibit layouts, media design work and promoting the art school which they have built together. They wouldn’t have it any other way. They have two creative children who write and make art and delight them endlessly.
Website: www.susanschwake.com
Studio: www.artstreamstudios.com
Instagram: susanbschwake
