Sue Tom
My mom. We grew up creating something from scraps, things neighbors would give to us that they didn't want anymore, broken jewelry, wrapping paper, etc. I know this set me up for how I see the world. It is a wornderful way to be when things don't go how you planned. Unbeknownst to me when I was young was that we didn't have a lot of money. Necessity is the mother of invention. My mother, my boyfriend-Cris Matos and I are incredibly kindred spirits when it comes to working with found objects. We find inspiration in creating something from nothing.
My mom is 83 and still finding joy everytime she starts a piece of art, discovers a new little place in San Francisco. She jumps on a Muni bus and get off wherever it feels right and enjoys the neighborhood. She comes back with lots of stories. She is a big inspiration to me.

Here's Sue's art statment:
Embedded in every artwork is the latent instruction through its creative history. Art evokes the sense of aesthetic, which hides the traces of craft and makes the artwork a holistic and irreducible entity, rendering itself inaccessible to the viewer as a set of instructions. As a teacher, Sue delights in decoding the mystery for students, transferring art from the aesthetic wonder of a recipient, through the rigorous crafting of a participant, to the unity of both, in the form of an artwork.
Art is the distillation of experience, and an arrangement of those small fragments of life that recreate the memory. This is why Sue is driven to use found objects and disused material, juxtaposing new life through existing material and prints. Through essential paring down and balancing of opposite forms she aptly portrays the tension between nature and representation of nature. The artwork is held in tension through comparing the similarity of the subject and simultaneously contrasting their form, while at rest through the context.
Within the art, Sue finds a microcosm of compliments and contradiction. This landscape functions to draw the viewer into a small-scaled world, where art creates itself through the minimal arrangement of simple symbols in a balanced spatial dance. The details slow down time and focus attention, to hint at beauty all around us.
In Sue’s reality, life presents endless inspiration and beauty. One need only take the time to examine and appreciate its simplicities and profoundness.