susan grabel’s work on the web
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art Feminist Art Base
The Pythians
Ceres Gallery
Artsy
Don’t Shut Up 2021
available for purchase
Forward Together: Susan Grabel
23 page full color exhibition catalog
Now available on Amazon
Constructions of Conscience: The Social Art of Susan Grabel
40 page full color exhibition catalog
Now available on Amazon
Weaving/Collagraph Collaboration with Tina Bliss
Tina Bliss weaves tapestries of cotton, magnetic tape, and graphite, incorporating Susan Grabel’s handprinted collagraphs.
Now available on Etsy
blogs and zines
Erini Asaad, Critical Artist Expression—Susan Grabel, Art and Women SP 2016
Robert Sievert, Constructions of Conscience: The Social art of Susan Grabel, Artezine.com, 2012
Helen Klebesadel, Susan Grabel: Art That Explores the Human Dimension of Social Issues, Helen Klebesadel: A Muse and Her Artist, 2012
Nicole Geary, Susan Grabel, Next Generation of Feminist Printmakers, 2008
Robert Sievert, Susan Grabel, Artezine.com, 2004
selected reviews and articles
Michael Fressola, Staten Island’s Susan Grabel ‘Comes of Age’ at Ceres Gallery in Chelsea, Staten Island Advance, May 12, 2013
“The Venuses, all modeled directly from real women, form a big-bellied and sturdy sort of sisterhood, timeless but aged and marked by gravity and work . . . . The project has an impeccable socio-political agenda that’s hard to argue with. The artist believes that there is beauty in the hard facts of humanity, age, time, gravity and avoirdupois. It’s a radical stance in an era when even people who are very, very old avail themselves of plastic surgery.”
Michael Fressola, How Many Wrongs Make A Right?, Staten Island Advance, March 18, 2012
“By art-world standards, longtime West Brighton-based sculptor Susan Grabel has been doing everything wrong for years now. But it has served her pretty well, as her Staten Island Museum retrospective Constructions of Conscience indicates.”
Christina Curcuru, Seeing is Believing, Industry Magazine, January/Febrary 2012
“For more than 40 years, artist Susan Grabel has exhibited her signature figurative sculptures, work that represents the human dimensions of thought-provoking social, cultural, and political issues she feels important enough to shed light on in an artistic way.”
Robert Sievert, Constructions of Conscience: The Social Art of Susan Grabel, www.artzine.com, February 29, 2012
“Her work has always had a deeply human component that shows a concern and feeling for the human condition. She aligns herself with the humanistic tradition of artists. Her admiration for Kathe Kollwitz, Honore Daumier, Rembrandt is clearly felt. She is a social critic as well as a witness to life’s injustices.”
Michael Fressola, Body Work at Vlepo, Art Lab, Staten Island Advance, June 18, 2004
“As her Earth Venus show at the Art Lab demonstrates, her torso template remains evocative and powerful no matter what changes it undergoes.”
Michael Fressola, Works of Clay, Staten Island Advance, September 3, 1995, p E1
“Ms. Grabel’s art inspires compassion and action. Its socially conscious work and the heads. . . are detailed and absorbing likenesses; each face speaks a volume of history and emotion and the box represents refuge or imprisonment depending.”
Vivien Raynor, Color Relationships in Valhalla, Family Ties in Krasdale, The New York Times, November 7, 1993, p WC28
“The show includes not only well-known families. . . but also goes out to second and third generations and even searched out in-laws. In fact one of the best teams is Herman Rose, . . . and his daughter-in-law, Susan Grabel, whose clay head, Emma, peeks out from between the slats of a crate.”
Michael Fressola, Sculpture with a cause, Staten Island Advance, October 23, 1990, p B14
“We don’t need Susan Grabel to tell us about the homeless. . . But as a sculptor, Ms. Grabel can do something unique. She can dramatize the all too familiar bag-person scenario, freeze it in time and transform it into an object that is beautiful and dismaying simultaneously.”
William Zimmer, Mansion and Former Factory Offer Varied Views of Women, The New York Times, March 18, 1990
“Homelessness would seem to be a ripe new topic, but how does one skirt clichés? Susan Grabel succeeds by meeting the cliché head on in a tour de force. In her Address Unknown, a large ceramic piece, a woman is seated on a bench amidst bundles of her belongings. The large tableau entailed so much care that it amounts to a meditation on the subject that might be salutary.”
Grace Glueck, Art: Sculptured Figures of 70’s at Pratt Gallery, The New York Times, November 7, 1980, p C19
“The new sculptural tendency toward ‘narrative’ is exemplified by. . . . Susan Grabel’s small City Environment No 1, a glazed ceramic piece that deploys figural groups in a series of cleverly linked room settings.”