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RESUME

Sooz wanted to acknowledge and express her heartful gratitude to all who helped to develop her art career and influenced her throughout her life.

Sooz, born Susan Bridges in Salt Lake City Utah in 1952 moved to Santa Monica at the age of one month. She doesn’t remember much about Utah but hears it is a nice place. At the age of 5 the family moved nearby to Pacific Palisades, and again, several years later, the family left apartment dwelling to live in a house on the Palos Verdes peninsula in the south bay area of the Los Angeles basin.

The Santa Monica area was, and still is, an artist community with an eclectic mix of west coast “laid back” and east coast structure and realism. Her parents, seeing the potential artist enrolled her at the age of 9 for oil painting lessons at Culver City’s “Artist’s Corner” studio. This was also the studio for “Margaret Keane”, who was famous for the wide eyed children paintings popular at that time. Sooz was not happy being the only child in a room full of adults which smelled of oil paints, and decided to move onto watercolors taking classes at Marymount College near her home. She did complete 3 oil paintings which were lost over time.

Watercolors offered a flexibility to create that opened up new avenues in painting. Color translucency and types of paper further expanded her interest in this medium and continues to this day with her trying new techniques she had learned from Marymount College classes and other institutes. One class included a field trip to a private residence in the gated community of Rolling Hills Estates. The terrain was filled with wild California Poppies and overlooked the blue Pacific Ocean. Painting “en plein air” in such an incredible environment with other budding artists was inspirational. Plein air also entails the elements such as sun, shadows, and wind. In fact, a gust of wind left her painting of poppies more impressionistic in their interpretation as it blew off the easel. With colors streaming down her paper, she was humbled by the experience and accepted a 3 rd place award.

By age 13 Sooz was painting scenes and characters in watercolors on beach rocks. “Studio Six”, a local gallery sold these on consignment and was her first commercial enterprise. She received several commissions to paint special “rocks” for business’ and families and still hears about how they are displayed on mantels and paper weights on desks. Many years later, after she was married, she stopped in to say hello and was given her pay for rocks that had sold over the years. The owner did not know of her whereabouts and held the money for her. What a treat.

Sooz’s artistic endeavors included commercial art at Palos Verdes High School. At the age of 15 she won the prize of a ride on the Goodyear Blimp in a contest to design a new “stamp”. She also worked as the teacher’s assistant, putting together art shows for which she received an award in her senior year. (About the Goodyear Blimp: She didn’t accept the ride since she would have had to ride alone and besides, was having thoughts of the Hindenburg).

College began with three years at the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque, studying all forms of art. New Mexico, like Santa Monica, is an artist haven and attracts renowned artisans and craftsmen, many of which taught at the U of NM. Some of her instructors included great masters: Carl Paak for Ceramics (noted in “Ceramics, a handbook for potters”); Beaumont Newhall (author of “History of Photography”) was a friend and colleague of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Newhall taught photography and held a private critique of Sooz final project “Photographs based on the style of Edward Weston”, that she completed early to allow her to transfer to the University of California at Santa Barbara. His critique was heartfelt and encouraging and left her feeling quite honored. Transferring to UCSB was a short lived experience with our marriage cutting short Sooz senior semester. College had to be postponed for another couple of years.

Sonoma State University, located north of the San Francisco bay, is a small school in another famous artist haven in the Napa/Sonoma/Mendocino area. The college and town it resides in are something of a leftover from the 60s. Sonoma State was deeply influenced by bohemian artists both in residence and throughout the community. Studying Studio Fine Arts with great professors in drawing and painting Sooz expanded into a style that has become the underlying style she uses today. Her professors and biggest influences included the guidance and teachings of Walt Kuhlman, Don Potts, and Gerald Bol.

Graduating from Sonoma State, and with family in tow, Sooz moved back to the South Bay area of Los Angeles. Looking to expand her artistic offerings she began hand painting pillows and director chair covers to add “functionality” to her works. She quickly discovered this idea to be incredibly labor intensive which led her to explore screen printing. It definitely appeared to be more efficient and speedier to produce larger quantities of prints and so she signed up for classes at the Palos Verdes Art Center. Her instructor there was Mina Tang Kan (a well known artist in screen printing, painting and mono prints). Sooz learned from Mina how to print fabrics for home decorating although she now finds as much pleasure in printing anything that can be printed. Mina’s works are on display on her web site and in her gallery in Bisbee, Arizona.

Closely associated with the Palos Verdes Art Center in 1984 was the Palos Verdes School System program "Art at your fintertips". The program encouraged artisans and parents to participate by teaching classes in the local schools in classes that are designed to help children express themselves using art and which also enhances their creative growth with taught art projects. Sooz volunteered and taught classes at Point Vicente Elementary School which was the school she attended as a young girl.

The summer of 1984 was a season of excitement in Los Angeles with the upcoming Summer Olympics. That was also the summer when Sooz met up again with Gemma Taccogna. Gemma was a world renowned ceramicist who gained fame for her tile murals and earlier works in paper mache. Gemma offered to take Sooz as an apprentice, giving her hands-on training in style and technique in creating ceramic art and glazing. This was a second meeting between these two as they had casually met while Sooz’s high school class made a field trip to visits Gemma’s studio and the art class was invited into Gemma’s home to hear her talk about her works. The apprenticeship was very informative, and an honor to be able to work with her for a summer. Gemma’s years of experience in both art and business was passed onto Sooz that summer of ‘84.

Despite a love for ceramics and all the different art mediums Sooz was still drawn to Screen Printing as an extension to hand painting. Combining the two led to her current business: Sooz Functional Artwork that started print making at her home in Thousand Oaks, California in 1993. Unfortunately, the economic downturn that year along with natural disasters made continuing work in California impossible. In 1996 Sooz and family moved to Eastern Tennessee, continuing with her love of printing and painting and now has included dye sublimation, glass etching, sign making, and commercial embroidery.