Susan Webster
Susan Webster has lived on Deer Isle for over thirty years. She has a home studio and a gallery space in her barn where she curates community-focused exhibits as well as showing experimental and new work of her own. She works with a wide range of materials and processes in her artistic practice to create drawings, prints, collages, cut canvases and large-scale installations. One of these installations was featured in 2020 Biennial at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art.
She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Women’s Studio Workshop (NY), was a visiting artist at the University of the Arts Borowsky Center (PA), and has taught widely, including leading workshops at Studio Artworks Center in Jerusalem, Center for Contemporary Printmaking (CT), Penland School of Crafts (NC), and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts (ME).
In addition to her studio work, she developed and taught in a nationally recognized arts program within the Maine prison system and has been an advocate and board member for the Next Step, part of the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence. She often uses her art as a platform to advocate for reproductive justice.
In 2024, she collaborated with poet Stuart Kestenbaum to publish A Quiet Book (Brynmorgen Press), a collection featuring her collages alongside his improvised handwritten text.
Susan Webster is also featured in the 2024 publication Art of Penobscot Bay, curated by Carl and David Little. Regarding her work, Carl Little has written "Webster’s awareness of the preciousness of time on earth heightens both her personal sense of existence and the art she creates. Even as she acknowledges a 'certain darkness, mystery, the unknown' she celebrates life."