Susan Lapham: Studio Tour and More

 

Susan Lapham, I Heart My Brothers
2021, 40"x40"

Susan Lapham lives in Virginia, summers in Cape Breton, and has chosen Atlantic Canada as her secondary SAQA region.    

Her contemporary quilts have been described as a lively dance between steady geometry and sparkling movement. Her work has been exhibited in Form, Not Function; Quilts=Art=Quilts; Visions Art Museum; and Quilt National.  Her award winning Playland series has received Best of Show, First Place, and Piecing Awards.  

Playland 1, 2020, 83"x82"

Born in Jerusalem, Susan lived in the Middle East and North Africa for the first 12 years of her life. Her degrees in Cartography and Survey Statistics led her to work in the US government and non-profit organizations as a mapmaker, statistician, manager and senior executive for nearly 40 years. She is currently Principal Investigator on US National Institutes for Health grants focusing on behavioral health and is Director of a sixty-year longitudinal study of human development and aging.

Along the way, she taught herself to quilt and obviously brings the same level of energy and discipline to her art.  When I asked Susan about artists who have inspired her work, her list included the Spanish sculptor Eduardo Chillida, the Lebanese painter Saloua Raouda Choucair,  and the Americans Karl Benjamin and Frank Stella.   All of them are characterized by clean lines and bold use of colour.

Susan, could you describe your workspace?

My studio is a 24 by 40 foot addition at the back of our house overlooking our woods and garden.  It is open and airy with lots of room to breathe. My design wall takes up one whole wall plus half of another – a total of about 38 feet by 8 feet tall. The room is empty except for the design wall, my sewing machine, and two large cutting tables forming an “L” in the middle of the room. I love spending time in the studio and find that I can be as creative as my imagination allows because there are no distractions.

It seems very well-lit. What are the light sources?

I have five large floor to ceiling windows and six skylights that let in a lot of natural light.  There are 12 8-foot LED lights mounted on the ceiling which provide additional light on grey days.  I also have Ott Creative Curve lamps beside my sewing machine and on the cutting table.  

Where do you keep your fabrics and threads?

 I don’t keep a lot of fabric – just enough to keep creating.  Yardage is kept in a dark closet on open shelves organized by value and color. Scraps are kept in 3 baskets, also organized by color and value. I keep a small bin of leftover bits and units from previous pieces, and turn to it to start each subsequent project. If I need a small piece of fabric I’ll use my unsewn scraps next and only go to my yardage if I need a big chunk.

I bag the tiniest scraps for a friend to make dog beds or for garden mulch - nothing wasted!

I only keep a few spools of thread (Superior) which are organized on a rack on the wall. My philosophy is if I don’t use something for a year, it is donated, gifted or recycled. 

Aside from the emptiness, which is rather unusual for a quilter, are there other unique features?

One unusual aspect is that my husband does all my quilting on his long arm machine. He has his own space at the other end of the house so when I have a top ready for him to quilt, I just walk downstairs and hand it over to him. I am more than blessed with this arrangement!

Another great aspect of my studio is that I can easily take it on the road – literally! 

Every summer for the past couple of decades, my husband and I hop into the RV and head to Cape Breton where we spend several weeks at Broad Cove campground. I use the same portable sew easy table that I use in my home studio and bring the five small baskets of fabric scraps that I use daily. Since I’m a minimalist it’s easy to schlep my tools back and forth. As I can’t bring the huge design wall, I work on smaller pieces or I hang a sheet on the clothesline and just deal with the constant breeze.

I can also dye fabric there which I don’t often do at home. I actually learned to dye from Anne Schroeder, another Cape Breton artist, several years ago.

Susan's portable studio...

Does it make a difference if you are in open or cluttered space?

...and her outdoor studio

Being a minimalist at heart I’m most creative when I have no distractions. Complete silence (except for the birds, the whisper of trees, and ocean waves) and no visual distractions. So definitely no clutter, just a lot of space.  I only have out what I need when I need it and tend to tidy up before moving on to a new task.  

You mentioned that it's easy to bring your studio, but what about favourite gadgets?

I’m not really a gadget person. I have a simple straight stitch sewing machine and the tools I use can easily fit into one glass jelly jar that includes a seam ripper, Karen K Buckley perfect scissors, a pair of large scissors, paper scissors, tweezers, hera tool and "that purple thang" (a sort of stiletto). I have a second glass jelly jar that includes the tools I need for the sewing machine – brush, screwdriver, oil, machine needles, pipe cleaner, walking foot and quarter inch foot.

Except for rotary cutters that are on the portable cutting tables, and a couple of rulers that I mostly use for trimming up finished quilts, I don’t keep much else. My goal is to keep the studio and my studio practice as minimal as possible.  

Going back to your main studio, what does having this workspace mean for your processes, and how do you make the space work for you?

I love my studio and spend every possible moment I can in it! Having lots of space to move around, large cutting tables and a huge design wall give me the freedom I need to translate what’s in my head to fabric. Being a minimalist and staying organized allows me to be efficient which helps with deadlines!

If you had the chance, what change would make it your ultimate creative space?

Taller design walls. I tend to work very large – 8 feet by 8 feet.  I would love to work bigger at some point but my design walls are currently 8 feet tall so it would be hard to create something larger.

Is there a project that you’re currently working on, or are excited about starting that you can tell us about? 

While I love working with tiny bits of fabric to build enormous pieces, I also love spare work. I’m experimenting with some spare pieces and am excited to see where I can go with them.  

Clothesline design wall 

More of Susan's work can be seen on her website at susanjlapham.net

Her husband, John Tsiaperas, who does the longarm quilting of her quilts, can be found here.

Her quilt, "I Heart My Brothers" at the beginning of this post, can be seen soon at the Material III exhibition at the D'Art Centre in Norfolk Virgina.

Another quilt in her Oh Brother series, "David", can be seen as part of the SAQA Commotion exhibit in Atlantic Canada (stay tuned for dates of two venues in Nova Scotia this summer).

Playland #3, above, won the 2nd Place Award of Excellence at Form Not Function 2020 and Best of Show at Out of the Funk (Fiberarts Guild of Pittsburgh).