Susan Feagin was born in Burbank, California and when she was 11 years old her family relocated across the country to the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia. She earned a BFA in ceramics from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1992. Susan started taking clay classes at the Penland School of Craft in 1994 and was a Core Fellow there from 1998-2000. In 2007 Susan finished an MFA in ceramics from University of Florida. Susan has been the clay studio coordinator at Penland School since 2007 and maintains a small home clay studio in Spruce Pine, North Carolina.
Ceramics, like a handwritten note or a worn book page, evokes memories and timelessness. The vessels I create are scrap paper collages created from suspended fragments of time represented by pieces of letters, hand-pulled prints, newspaper photos, and journal pages. These ceramic vessels reflect the intimacy and the comfort of my handmade journal and my sketchbook. Stoneware or porcelain slabs are draped and collaged together over molds. I try to work quickly. The forms are simple so as to contrast the busy surface and also to suggest immediate use. It appears as if the paper scraps have come to life and lifted themselves into an inviting shape, calling us to pause for a closer look.