Susan kae Grant (born 1954) is an American artist and educator.Burnstine, Susan. "American Connection: The Dreamlike Quality of Susan kae Grant's Visionary Photographs," Black + White Photography, September 2012,, p. 22–23.Littlefield, Kinney. "The Twilight Zone of Susan Kae Grant," Dallas Life Magazine, 1987. Her work includes cinematic, staged photographic tableaux and portraits, as well as artist's books.Abatemarco, Michael. "Dream Catcher: Dream Photos by Susan kae Grant," Pasatiempo, November 2013. Retrieved March 11, 2025.Willis, Deborah. "How the Past Shapes Modern Photography," TIME, October 2, 2014. Retrieved March 11, 2025.Stevens, Liz. "Art by the Book," Fort Worth Star-Telegram, August 22, 1996. Critics noted her early series for their use of vivid color and emotionally charged scenarios concerned with gender and sexual politics.Kasahara, Michiko. Exploring the Unknown Self: Self-Portraits of Contemporary Women, Tokyo: Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, 1991.Whitnack, Nancy. Susan kae Grant: Thirty-Year Retrospective, Dallas, TX: The McKinney Avenue Contemporary, 2007.Littlefield, Kinney. "Brightly colored images from a world of real dreams," The Dallas Observer, March 1985. Since the 2000s, she has focused on black-and-white imagery that uses shadow as a metaphor to explore perceptual aspects of dreams and memory.Atwell, Wendy Weil. "Susan kae Grant: Night Journey," ARTLIES, Summer 2002, p. 66.Carter, Steve. "Restless Ruminations," Patron Magazine, July 2020, p. 50–53. Grant's work is widely considered psychological,Smithson, Aline. "Susan kae Grant: Night Journey – PhotoNOLA Prize: 2nd Place," Lenscratch, September 4, 2018. Retrieved September 10, 2024.Smith, Garrett. "She Dreams of Shadows: Susan kae Grant," REM by Austere Magazine, February 2015, p. 69–71. described by critic Michael Abatemarco as "an exploration into the familiar but fragmentary realm of the subconscious, where memories and thoughts appear to blend into strange, hybrid, and sometimes, nightmarish forms."
Grant's work belongs to the public collections of the Smithsonian Institution,Smithsonian. "Science and the Artist's Book," Exhibitions. Retrieved September 10, 2024. Victoria & Albert Museum,Victoria and Albert Museum. Giving fear a proper name : Detroit, by Susan kae Grant, Collections. Retrieved September 10, 2024. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Susan kae Grant, Collection. Retrieved September 10, 2024. and George Eastman Museum,George Eastman Museum. "New Library Acquisition Explores Coming to Terms with Fear," Newsletter, July/August 1994, p. 14. among others. She has exhibited at institutions including the Smithsonian,Maran, Sally Scott. "Science Defined by the Hands of a Book Artist," Smithsonian Magazine, June 1995, p. 108–11. Retrieved March 11, 2025. Center for Book Arts,Minsky, Richard. Book Arts in the USA, New York: The Center For Book Arts, 1990. Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Center for Photography at WoodstockThe Center for Photography at Woodstock. New Surrealism, or the Fiction of the Real, Woodstock, NY: The Center for Photography at Woodstock, 1988. and Center for Creative Photography.Lowe, Charlotte, "These Art Shows are for Readers," The Tucson Citizen, January 28, 1993. Grant is based in Dallas, Texas.
Early life and career Grant was born in 1954 in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin.Baillargeon, Claude. Shadows of the Invisible, Oakland, MI: Oakland University Art Gallery, 2014. She attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, earning a BS in art and art education (1976) and an MFA in photography and book arts (1979).Bland, James. "Portraits of the Artists," D Home, March/April 2009. After graduating, she taught at Wayne State University in Detroit, before moving to Dallas to teach at Texas Woman's University (TWU) in 1981.Colby, Joy Hokanson. "G for Grant, who's good," The Detroit News, August 2, 1981, p. 1J, 6J, 7J.Smith, Patrick S. "The Autobiographical Dramas of Susan kae Grant," Blackflash, Winter 1984–85, p. 7. She was a professor and head of photography and book arts at TWU until 2017 when she retired as Cornaro Professor of Visual Art, Emerita. Since 1989 she has taught workshops at the International Center of Photography, Anderson Ranch Arts Center and Los Angeles Center for Photography, among others.PhotoNOLA. "2017 PhotoNOLA Review Prize," 2017. Retrieved September 10, 2024.Maine Media College. "The Handmade Photographic Artist's Book," Workshops. Retrieved March 11, 2025.
Grant has had solo exhibitions at the Kansas City Art Institute (1989), Anchorage Museum (1997), Houston Center for Photography (2001), Conduit Gallery in Dallas (2002–20) and Grace Museum (2023), among other venues.Freedman, Donna. "'Rarefied Light' Juror Sculpts Books," Anchorage Daily News, August 10, 1997.The Grace Museum. "Susan kae Grant: Shadowing Grace," Exhibitions, 2023. Retrieved March 11, 2025. In 2007, a thirty-year retrospective of her work was held at McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Dallas.
Work and reception Grant's work draws upon autobiographical sources such as journals, personal and scientific research, as well as influences from photography, film, painting, literature and music.Kovacs, Chris. "Featured: Susan kae Grant," Adore Noir, December 2012, cover, p. 46–61. Her images begin as pre-visualized ideas that are developed through a studio process which involves casting, the staging of models, and scene building with complex set-ups, props, backdrops and lighting. In formal terms, critics have noted the fabricated silhouetted imagery for its emphasis on light and dark, contrast, patterning, and a juxtaposition of forms that leaves interpretation open-ended.Frieser, Hannah. Susan kae Grant: Thirty-Year Retrospective, Dallas, TX: The McKinney Avenue Contemporary, 2007. Her books are autobiographical works that often involve research and incorporate letterpress and digital technologies, handmade papers, photographic imagery, text and unconventional materials such as cowhide, lead, fur and vinyl.Powers, William F. "Art That Speaks Volumes," The Washington Post, June 3, 1995.Washington, April. "Art Instructor is a Noted Book Artist," Denton Record Chronicle, February 29, 1996.
Individual series and projects In her early Autobiographical Dramas (1977–89), Grant translated journal material into abstract portrayals of ideas, feelings and humor centered on women's roles and sexual politics. Initially photographing herself (or models as stand-ins) in ambiguous situations in black-and-white, Grant shifted towards elaborate, vividly colored work that critics characterized as surreal and confrontational in its socio-sexual commentary.
With Vestiges (1992–94), a work addressing animal welfare, critics noted a shift in tone from restless and probing to calm and contemplative.Tyson, Janet. "Significant Contributions From Two Universities," Fort Worth Star Telegram, October 27, 1993. The largely monochromatic, mixed-media project included silver-print images juxtaposing medical illustrations of human and animal hearts, an artist's book, sound, text and installations; the effects of its altar-like displays, cruciform clusters of text and imagery, mounds of dirt and votive-candle lighting were described as funereal and theatrical in quality.Silva, Elda. "'Vestiges' has food for Thought," San Antonio Light, August 30,1992.
Grant's touring, multi-chapter project Night Journey (2000– ), has included an immersive installation, individually and grouped images, video projection and sound. The series portrays a surreal, indistinct space in which silhouetted, incongruous forms (e.g., female figures, dolls, ballerinas, birdcages) seem to merge, partially vanish or melt into one another.Van Ryzin, Jeanne Claire. "Dream Art's Dreamy," Austin American-Statesman, June 13, 2002, p. 31. The orchestrated interplay of shadow gestures and props on a screen was inspired by sleep laboratory research (conducted on Grant in collaboration with Dr. John Herman at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center), dream recordings and descriptions, memory and journal sketches.Goodrich, Terry Lee. "Dream Weaver," Fort Worth Star-Telegram, May 10, 2000. The images were first printed and displayed in mazes of sheer chiffon panels hung from ceilings, then as black-and-white iris prints; critics suggested they convey a sense of both uncanny mystery and hazy familiarity, like Plato's Allegory of the Cave—shadows standing for other realities. According to Lenscratch critic Aline Smithson, the series evokes "monochromatic dream states, psychological spaces that are at once childlike and a little bit sinister. [Grant's] use of light, shadow, and silhouette reflect a process that is well-considered and methodical."
Grant's Shadow Portraits (2004– ) trace back formally and thematically to Night Journey and to the popular silhouette portraits of the late 18th century, blending romanticism with a contemporary aesthetic.Barber, Lily. "Questions with an Educator: Susan kae Grant," ASMP (American Society of Media Photographers), 2019. Retrieved March 11, 2025. Her Collective Ruminations series (2020), completed during the COVID-19 pandemic, was a departure from high-contrast to highly patterned, white-on-white imagery juxtaposing location-shot trees with illustrations appropriated from historical dictionaries and encyclopedias.Glasstire. "Susan kae Grant: Collective Ruminations," September 10, 2020. Retrieved September 10, 2024. Borne out of personal experience (retirement from teaching, family deaths, meditation) and an interest in near-death experience (and its association with white light), these works metaphorically convey a sense of self-reflection, universality, vulnerability and beauty interrupted by intrusive thought according to critic Steve Carter.
Book art Since 1976, Grant has published twelve handmade, limited-edition artist's books through her own imprint, Black Rose Press. Reviewers suggest they range in tone from playful (e.g., An Alphabet Book, 1979–81; the flip book trio The Wink The Kiss The Slap, 1997–88) to serious or unsettling (e.g., Portrait of an Artist and her Mother, 1978; Vestiges, 1992–4).
Among the latter works, Giving Fear a Proper Name: Detroit (1980–85) has been described as a poetic, fragmented representation of inner-city fear and alienation; bound in pink Cadillac car vinyl, its pages include collaged objects (bloody teeth, straight pins, slashed and pierced photographs) and text about various phobias.Sherrin, Bob. "Beyond the Lines," Vanguard, April/May 1988.Solnit, Rebecca. "Vehicles of the Personal," Artweek, June 1986. Radio-Active Substances (1994–7) is a memorial to the life of Marie Curie and examination of feminist issues, created for the Smithsonian exhibition "Science and the Artist's Book." Along with quotes and illustrations by Curie, it features a cover and pages made of lead sheeting and a box whose lid holds test tubes containing printed scrolls—materials that suggest themes of danger, illness, exploration and destruction.Dixon, Jeremy. "Aliens, Sunset, and Radioactivity," The Blue Notebook: Journal for Artists' Books, Bristol, UK: Centre for Fine Print Research, University of the West of England, Vol 8, No 1, 2013. Washington Post critic William F. Powers called it an "eerie and provocative" work reminding viewers that "scientific knowledge is an exquisite and dangerous thing."