Suzanne Moore

Suzanne taught the following workshops at Legacies III:
Page Dazzle: Patent Leaf Gilding
In the Glow of Gouache

Born to a family of gifted inventor-engineers, raised in post-Sputnik middle America, with aptitudes in math and science, Suzanne was channeled into those fields at an early age, making her way into the world of art-making at 20-something. She earned a BFA in Printmaking and Drawing in 1973. Suzanne is a lettering artist, painter, and printmaker whose eclectic interests meld in the diversity of her artists’ books. She weaves word and painted image with form, content and structure into spaces which invite the reader to engage, examine and inquire. Her books blend abstract and representational imagery, rich color and surface treatments with textual content and contemporary lettering to create work that obscures the line between word and image, legibility and abstraction. Suzanne’s work is exhibited widely, and her books have been acquired for private and public collections in the U.S. and Europe. Among them are the Pierpont Morgan Library, The Library of Congress and the rare book collections of Smith College, Wellesley College, Harvard University, Yale, Princeton, Bowdoin College, and the University of Washington. She speaks and teaches in the US and abroad on contemporary manuscript book design, conceptual ideas in book design, and on the painting and collage techniques.

She is one of three Americans on the team who created contemporary interpretive illuminations (2001-2011) for the St. John’s Bible, the Wales-based project lead by Donald Jackson. Commissioned by the Abbey at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, this is the first hand written and illuminated Bible created in 500 years.

Suzanne’s book work has included a pair of large-format manuscript books with monotype imagery presenting Bob Dylan song lyrics, and interpretations of the Holst “Planets” Suite and Emily Dickinson’s poetry. Following two commissioned manuscripts, she completed an edition of books on the concept, the tumultuous history and the mystery of Zero and the Void. Recently, she was commissioned to create a large-format manuscript about Scheherazade: the music, the ballet, artists’ collaboration, and the story of Scheherazade. Extensive research led her to examine various concepts: the idea of “the other” in Orientalist thinking, as we consider our relationship to the Middle East, historically and in more recent history, what it means to be at the greatest disadvantage and conjure creative gifts to save lives and create love. Suzanne and her husband recently moved their home and studios (during Covid-crazy-times) to Tucson, Arizona.