Sculptor Susan White returns to Studios Inc this summer with an Artist Talk and Demonstration for her exhibition “Still Tangled”. White is recognized for her use of dagger-like honey locust thorns throughout her sculptures and her pyrographic works on paper.

“All of my work is about the relationship between order and chaos and the constant navigation between the two. Behind the burning process of the pyrographs lies the agrarian practice of burning the fields to restore nitrogen to the soil and the cauterizing of wounds. The thorn works respond to the architectural nature of their structure and the language of rhythm and pattern found therein. Other works express a search for structure, rhythm and underlying form in the everyday; an effort to reveal the extraordinary in the ordinary. And finally, I’m interested in the role of fear and anxiety as the core of creativity, uncomfortable friends that catapult us forward.”

The thorn flag reflects the angst and frustration, the sense of disarray, contentiousness and the fractious nature of democracy occurring at this moment in America. The thorns themselves are elegant in their geometry and simplicity, yet daunting in their sense of danger and potential for destruction. This is similar to the theory of democracy which is elegant in theory, yet dangerous when the freedoms it provides are abused and subverted for nefarious means.