{"id":30058,"date":"2015-10-10T01:31:43","date_gmt":"2015-10-10T07:31:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=30058"},"modified":"2019-11-15T10:15:45","modified_gmt":"2019-11-15T16:15:45","slug":"mysterious-purpose-the-life-and-art-of-susan-harris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/mysterious-purpose-the-life-and-art-of-susan-harris\/","title":{"rendered":"Mysterious Purpose: The Life and Art of Susan Harris"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It’s a common trope, the artist who tells you they began their career at an early age, attracting the accolade of adults when they were still preschoolers, or executing their first masterpiece on the dining room wall, to the\u2014slightly proud\u2014dismay of their parents. There was no such beginning for Susan Harris, professor of ceramics at Southern Utah University, who came to her craft well into adulthood. In fact, had it not been for a genetic mutation passed on by her Dutch ancestors, Harris might never even have touched clay.<\/p>\n

Harris spent her early years as an Air Force brat, but her family eventually settled on Long Island, where her childhood was steeped in music. “It was my passion. And I was good at it,” she says, her New York roots evident in her matter-of-fact manner and the nasal tones of her speech. The flute was her instrument and she\u00a0was<\/em>\u00a0good at it, good enough to go to Indiana University on a full music scholarship. But in her sophomore year at IU she began having trouble hearing. After repeated visits to specialists, she was told her hearing loss was hereditary, and that it would be progressive, complete, and inevitable: a rude awakening from the dream she had pursued since she was 8.<\/p>\n

Stunned, Harris searched for alternatives. “I had done some anthropology and archeology classes, and was interested in the field, so I concentrated on that.” In her final year she shifted to the University of Illinois, where her husband, a sociologist, went for graduate work. After over 200 credit hours \u2014 “you can never have too many college credits,” she quips \u2014 she graduated with a double major (Latin American Studies\/Anthropology) and a double minor (Ethnomusicology\/Music). “So I had a lot of stuff that I wasn’t particularly good at.\u201d<\/p>\n

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It was when she turned to anthropology that Harris discovered clay. “I wanted to learn how they made these things I was studying,” she says. “There was a hobby center at IU and I went there and learned how to make pots.” When her husband was offered a teaching position at Utah State University and the family (two children, ages 1 and 2) moved to Logan, she continued taking night classes in ceramics. \u201cI realized that\u2019s where I belonged.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also realized her marriage was over. Wanting to stay in Logan so the children could be near their father, she knew she needed to look for a means of support, which she cobbled together from her experiences at the university and from her new-found passion for pottery.<\/p>\n

For 18 hours a week she worked at USU’s Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, where she had received a Mountain West fellowship to create a ceramics catalog for the museum\u2019s collection. \u201cThat was the time when Twain Tippetts had been director of the museum and he was collecting a lot of pottery from miscellaneous grad students and keeping no record whatsoever. It would be \u2018Student pot no. 1\u2018, Student pot no. 2\u2019 on the bottom of the pots.\u201d So the catalog became an investigation. \u201cIf I could find out who did one, I could compare the style and the finger marks and the ridges and the handling of the clay and match it up with others.\u201d All those credit hours in archeology were not wasted. \u201cI wasn\u2019t paid a whole lot to do that job, but I really enjoyed it.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also began teaching classes at Logan\u2019s AVA (the Alliance for Varied Arts, now part of the Cache Valley Center for the Arts), where she was also the artist in residence for 17 years. “I used to have to pack up my wheel in my car and piles of clay and tools and go around to Cache Valley schools and make pots with little kids,” she says. \u201cAt one point I made pots with something like 270 school children in Tremonton Elementary and arranged to have them fired in the electric kilns the little old ladies in the area had to make porcelain dolls.\u201d<\/p>\n

After years of working with hobby potters, however, she developed a hunger to teach at the university level, to work with future professional artists. “As luck would have it, I had met my current husband and when I said I wanted to go to grad school, he said ‘Go for it and I\u2019ll take care of your kids.'”<\/p>\n

So she put together a portfolio (the only real application requirement at the time) and applied to Utah State University’s program. \u201cI still had three jobs and went to grad school full time,\u201d she says. It was the late \u201880s and Gaell Lindstrom and Larry Elsner were teaching at USU, but the real draw, she says, was the newly hired John Neely. It took Harris a total of three years to finish\u2014Neely left for a year\u2014 but she was glad for all the time she spent there. \u201cYou make the best work the last two months in grad school . . . it\u2019s not your first idea that\u2019s your best idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

While working on her MFA she began volunteering with the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) as a registrar. She was responsible for keeping track of the annual traveling exhibitions and in the process became acquainted with a broad range of artists. “I got to meet all these amazing people who were top of their field in ceramics.” After proving herself a “responsible slave,” she eventually was appointed as Exhibitions Director on NCECA’s board. For six years she curated two big shows a year and produced a catalog for the organization.<\/p>\n

After Harris finished her MFA in 1990, she taught for a year at the Kansas City Art Institute as a sabbatical replacement, but afterwards returned to Logan, where her daughter was still going to college. She taught for a year at Utah State and then, in 1996, Harris beat out three friends to get the position at Southern Utah University, where she has remained for the past two decades.<\/p>\n

During that time, interest in her work has steadily increased and she\u2019s regularly invited to exhibitions across the country.<\/p>\n