An introduction to Susan
Susan Ferrari Rowley’s contribution to the visual arts platform is uniquely significant within the dialogue of Contemporary Sculpture, as a woman and as a pioneer in the use of her materials. Using textile as a pure sculptural medium having form within itself, Rowley built her relevance in the height of the Fine Art Craft Transition and transcended above the label of fiber artist to be known purely as a contemporary sculptor challenging our perceptions of material, structure, and experience in a space. Rowley aggressively broke into the male dominated sculpture platform while intentionally making work devoid of socio-political feminist context and inner-personal dramas allowing for a more collective universal experience for the viewer.
She went on to exhibit at many prominent institutions such as the Nicolaysen Art Museum, The Alexandria Museum of Art, The Rockford Art Museum, The Memorial Art Gallery of Rochester, amongst many others. In 2005 she secured representation at Ivan Karp’s prestigious OK Harris Gallery in Manhattan, NY, and has received a multitude of diverse awards. Rowley has been the subject of local, regional and national publicity including reviews in The New York Times, Abstract Art Online, and Sculpture Magazine to name a few. Several reviews have noted her as being an innovator of un-established uses of fabrics, validating the medium for the creation of “non-utilitarian conceptual works of art”. Her resume includes being juried into exhibitions by noted curators from The Brooklyn Museum, MOMA, The Metropolitan, and the Whitney.
Her recent career is marked by selection and inclusion for exhibition, both solo and group. Solo exhibitions were at Artspace in Virginia; The Delaware Contemporary Museum, ‘Improbable Suspension’; and ‘Spatial Delineation’ at the Five Points Gallery in Connecticut. In 2020, Rochester Institute of Technology requested that she create for their massive two-story University Gallery. The major focus was twelve monumental sculptures utilizing the second-floor elevated walls. The Rubens Family Foundation awarded her a grant for the production of her vision ‘Suspension vs Gravity’. Her 2026 exhibition ‘Perceptual Expanse’ will be at the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn NY.
Her work has been shown extensively in prestigious group shows. She was one of seven American sculptors chosen for the 2018 exhibition Time/Space/Existence, in Venice, Italy, as part of the Venice Biennial. In 2021 she was invited into the Foto Focus International Biennial to create an innovative sculpture incorporating photography. The result was a unique installation that was included in their exhibition and book entitled ‘World Record’. During the pandemic (2021-2022) she was prolific, creating work for two curated museum exhibitions: ‘Entendre’ at the Sugarland Museum, and ‘The State of Sculpture’, at the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, both in Texas. 2024 brought an invitation into the International Sculpture Center’s ‘SLANT: Perspectives in Sculpture’.
As a recipient of a New York State Cultural Grant for $10,000, and a Mellon Foundation Fellow for $130,000, she is now preparing new work for her 2026 ‘Perceptual Expanse’ exhibition at the Schweinfurth in Auburn, NY.
Watershed Moments
As the debate over ‘fine art’ and ‘fine art craft’ continued on an international scale, Ferrari Rowley fueled the conversation to erase boundaries in exhibitions such as ‘Materials: Hard and Soft’ in Texas and The International Art Competition juried by Messinger of MOMA, Satz of the Whitney, and Little from Art in America. She simultaneously won best of show and purchase for the permanent collection at Chautauqua National Exhibition, and the Brenholz Award for Innovation at the International Fiber Exhibition. Her transition into the world of Fine Arts with her medium of choice, fabric, was now complete. While showing consistently in New York City, she was accepted into the famed international OK Harris Gallery in Manhattan, selected by the late icon of modern art, Ivan Karp, whose mission was ‘to show the most significant art of our time’.
Current Professional Activity
The Delaware Contemporary Museum selected Ferrari Rowley for a one-person exhibition in 2017, along with Artspace, in Richmond, Virginia. 2019 included her exhibition at Five Points Gallery in Torrington, Connecticut. The breadth of her venues included the outdoor exhibitions at Chautauqua Institute and SculptureNow at The Mount, in Lenox, Massachusetts. She was in the iconic international 2018 Venice Biennial Sculpture Exhibition, Time/Space/Existence, as one of seven American sculptors included in this portion of the architecture exhibition, and was invited back to Venice for the 2020 exhibition. Additionally, she had a major exhibition/installation open in 2020, funded by the Rubens Family Foundation, at Rochester Institute of Technology, NY. A second is planned for 2022 at the Public Art Projects Exhibition Space in Cincinnati, Ohio, to mark the grand opening of their newly designed space.
Process
My sculpture involves processes that are innovative, and refined through personal development and need, enabling me to get the resulting forms that define my aesthetic. My designing utilizes metal-working techniques of bending, cutting, assembling and welding, prior to the placement of fabrics and other malleable materials that integrate with the forms. Fabrics are well placed, and hand stitched, or laced taught to frameworks, and sheet metals are handled similarly and screwed to their underlying forms.
Materials
The materials for my linear frameworks are aluminum for my indoor work and aluminum or stainless steel for my outdoor work. The material that defines the planes on the sculptures is Fabric. The fabrics I use are translucent and man-made polyfiber, and spun lutradur. Both of these allow for the encased volume of the sculptures to play a major role. I am currently creating an off-shoot using screen printing methods on the fabrics and vinyl for photographic process to be involved in specific concepts. My outdoor work favors thin sheet and perforated metals as sheathing on the forms.
Design and Conceptual Aesthetic
My sculptures are born out of human emotions that correlate with cultural issues I am living with at the time of creation. They are not literal, but evocative. Forms contain a minimum amount of tangible structure, allowing for space and volume to have equal importance. The attribute of balance, how I achieve it, and the tension I create in challenging it visually is of major importance in much of the work. Form that appears to float and defy gravity is of particular interest to me in conveying concept. The space that my sculpture is going to be in is paramount to my process. It pleases me most when they integrate and relate.
