Susan Brandeis recently retired from full–time teaching at North Carolina State University’s College of Design, where she was Distinguished Professor of Art & Design and a member of the University’s Academy of Outstanding Teachers. She holds a Master of Science degree in Art Education from Indiana University and a Master of Fine Arts in Textile Design from the University of Kansas.
Her studio practice has focused on large-scale works for the wall in public places. She continues to investigate hand and machine printing; dyeing; stitched embellishment; the juxtaposition of pattern and color; and the contrasts created through individual and layered materials and textures. She has sought a personal visual repertoire––a “language”––of materials and techniques to communicate the essence of places of great natural beauty, and, more recently, the tantalizing mysteries of encounters with ancient scripts, petroglyphs, palimpsests, faux text, and symbols.
Her artwork has been published in the books Celebrating the Stitch; The Surface Designer’s Art; The Art Quilt; Freestyle Machine Embroidery; and Contemporary Quilt Art; and in leading craft, design, and textile art magazines such as American Craft; Fiberarts; Surface Design Journal; The Design Journal; Embroidery (U.K.); and Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture. The work has been exhibited throughout the United States and in England, Ireland, Finland, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Colombia, the International Biennial of Tapestry (Switzerland), and at The Textile Museum in Washington, DC. She is represented in numerous private and public collections, including the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian. She has taught summer workshops at Penland School of Crafts (North Carolina); Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts (Tennessee); the Split Rock Arts Program (University of Minnesota); Haystack Mountain School of Crafts (Maine); and the Oregon College of Arts and Crafts.
She founded the Southeast Fibers Educators Association and was a three–time Visual Artist Fellow with the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources.