Sue Havens

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Artist’s Statement

 

My interdisciplinary practice and unconventional approach, embodied in abstract painting, sculpture, and installation, are inspired by the spectacular and mundane of the world’s visual vernacular as revealed in my surrounding environments. These disparate influences — such as the lights on amusement park rides at the state fair, dotted sidewalk pavers, painted lines in parking lots, thrift store fabrics, cracked pavement, Turkish kilims, supermarket packaging, miniature golf architecture, and tree bark — are bolstered by my ongoing investigation of flatness, dimensionality, color, and pattern within painting and sculpture. I create new forms by culling references from the areas I live, the places I travel, and the objects and ephemera I collect so that content might be remembered, discovered, and felt.

Sue Havens (born 1972 in Rochester, New York) is an artist based in New York and Tampa. Havens received her BFA in Art from The Cooper Union for The Advancement of Science and Art in 1995, and her MFA in painting from The Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College in 2003. Havens is a 2008 Fellowship recipient in Painting from The New York Foundation for the Arts and a recipient of the 2017 McKnight Junior Faculty Development Fellowship. She is currently an assistant Professor of Art at The University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida.

 

Havens has exhibited internationally and nationally in venues such as The Knockdown Center in New York, Galerie Nord in Berlin, The Museum of Drawings in Laholm, Sweden, The Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art at UNLV, Regina Rex, Underdonk, The Switzer Gallery at Pensacola State, Jeff Bailey, PS 122, Postmasters, Frederich Petzel, Art in General, Momenta Art, Sara Meltzer, OK Harris, Pierogi, The Tampa Museum of Art, and Mindy Solomon in Miami among many others. Havens authored, designed and illustrated the book Make Your Own Toys (2010). Her work was featured in Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine, New American Painting Magazine, the Korean International Ceramic Biennale.

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About Posit Editor

Susan Lewis (susanlewis.net) is the Editor-in-chief and founder of Posit (positjournal.com) and the author of ten books and chapbooks, including Zoom (winner of the Washington Prize), Heisenberg's Salon, This Visit, and State of the Union. Her poetry has appeared in anthologies such as Walkers in the City (Rain Taxi), They Said (Black Lawrence Press), and Resist Much, Obey Little (Dispatches/Spuyten Duyvil), as well as in journals such as Agni, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Conjunctions online, Diode, Interim, New American Writing, and VOLT.