Three portraits by Suzanne Storer from the Visual Art Institute’s “I’m Roofless, Not Homeless.”

At the heart of one of the numerous ceramic exhibitions currently in Salt Lake City, as part of the NCECA conference, is a simple but profound premise: to see people too often ignored.

“My art stems from my innate desire to make connection with my fellow human beings,” Ogden-based artist Suzanne Storer told 15 Bytes’ Ehren Clark in 2013. “Like a lot of artists, I work alone in my studio and it’s very isolating. Maybe I work with the figure to be closer to other people,” she told him. Trained initially as a potter, her early works featured expressive line drawings on functional forms. Over time, those figures stepped off the surface, transforming into complex, three-dimensional sculptures—often intimate high-relief portraits—charged with narrative and emotion.

In 2023, Storer began a series of portraits inspired by stories about her grandmother, who during the Great Depression invited a “hobo” to dinner every Sunday. “It feels like my grandmother is here with me as I work,” Storer says of working on her relief portraits of unhoused people from Ogden and beyond. In all she created a series of 20 portraits, first exhibited at the Eccles Community Art Center in Ogden in 2024 and scheduled to go on a two-year tour following the NCECA exhibition. (First stop: Salt Lake Community College).

Several relief sculptures by Suzanne Storer depicting unhoused individuals.

Storer pays her subjects and as she photographs them they often tell her their story. One portrait, entitled “Perseverance” is of a gentleman whom she photographed just after he had been kicked out of an Alcholics Anonymous meeting. He had refused to leave his backpack outside. “All of his possessions were in it and he had nowhere else safe to leave it … just one example of how the smallest things can make life difficult and precarious for people living on the street,” she says. When Storer met Myrna, who slept with her husband in a parked car next to one of Ogden’s parks, she was pleased with her jewelry collection, so Storer chose to emphasize it in the portrait.

“Apprehension” and “Passing Time in the Park” by Suzanne Storer.

“As I work on each sculpture I think about the person I’m sculpting. I’d much rather draw or sculpt a weathered face that reveals that person’s life…It’s a beautiful mental space to work in, caring above all else about whether or not the work in progress meaningfully catches another person’s difficult existence,” Storer says. “Creating the illusion of 3-D space on a single surface takes concentration. Of course the clay also must make it through the kiln firings.”

Prior to her exhibition at the Eccles, Storer learned about Vancouver-based sculptor Louise Weir, an accomplished figurative sculptor who also chose to bear witness to individuals too often ignored, and invited her to exhibit together. Weir’s sculptures focus on individuals navigating mental illness, many of whom have also experienced homelessness. Weir’s portraits combine classical techniques with expressive, even forensic, detail—each one shaped through close conversation and deep respect. “I have created commissions for churches and law courts,” she says, “but this work is some of the most personal I’ve done.”

Maggie, who has since passed, was a woman who lived unsheltered off and on for years. Weir would buy flowers from her sometimes outside Vancouver’s 5th Avenue Cinema. Glenn, she says, “has movie star qualities with his dark eyes, moustache, and twinkle,” but suffers from bipolar disorder, hepatitis C, and a spinal injury resulting from a brutal assault. For three years he slept on the same bench, keeping the area clean by picking up garbage. Another subject, Christopher, suffered from bipolar disorder that disrupted his life as early as high school, and was often unhoused. “A gentle soul, he understandably found the experience of homelessness to be be very frightening,” she says.

The sculptures are wonderfully individual, offering real people—rendered in clay but full of life and complexity—each one carrying a story that demands to be felt as much as seen.

Louise Weir’s portriat of “Glenn” in the foreground, with works by Suzanne Storer on the wall, at the Visual Art Institute.

Sculpted busts by Vancouver artist Louise Weir at the Visual Art Institute including, in the foreground, “Maggie.”

I’m Roofless, Not Homeless, Visual Art Institute, South Salt Lake through March 29. Reception: Thursday, March 27, 6–9pm.

I’m Roofless, Not Homeless, The George S. & Dolores Doré Eccles Gallery, SLCC South City Campus, Salt Lake City, April 3-May 28. Reception: Thursday, April 3, 5–7pm.

All images courtesy of the author.

Shawn Rossiter

The founder of Artists of Utah and editor of its online magazine, 15 Bytes, Shawn Rossiter has undergraduate degrees in English, French and Italian Literature and studied Comparative Literature in graduate school before pursuing a career in art.