Susan Stinsmuehlen-Amend
Artwork Information
“Flora”, 2001
Kiln-fired paint on glass, mixed media on wood supports (diptych)
24” x 32”
$3,500
"Tree Service, Calendar Notations" Series, 2004
Kiln-fired paint on slumped glass, wood support
27” x 21” x 3.5”
$3500
Artist Statement:
Calendar Notation Series 2005
Subject matter for “Tree Service/Calendar Notation Series”, was culled from a collection of paper desk calendars. These large format calendars reveal information from my personal and professional life. Selected details, which show a record of things to do, appointments, doodles (unconscious marking), etc., are blown-up and painted and fired on clear glass. On the reverse is painted some form of nature noticed during that month of the year (crows here). The glass is slumped, bent in the kiln, causing the imagery to become distorted, suggesting the equivocal nature of time. Glass is the fragile material on which the daily course of a life is recorded.
Flora 2001
Flora is from a series of work started at the Pilchuck Glass School through the Hauberg Fellowship (May 2001). I worked for two weeks in the wilderness of the Northwest with some of my favorite glass painting peers. It was the first time I attempted to take kiln-fired painting on glass seriously; a difficult process extant since the 12 th Century. Based on a series of drawings I did on vellum, another transparent medium, I wanted to make “deep drawings” by firing vitreous enamels on both sides of clear glass and mounting to a wood backing painted or collaged with related imagery. Flora is about different ways of thinking about flowers and the roles of women. Flora is the Roman goddess of flowers, spring and fertility. The silhouettes are of neolithic Goddess figurines, archeological evidence of an early matriarchal culture tied to the mysteries of the earth and nature. The large armless woman is taken from a Malevich painting (1930). She is covered in a doily pattern used for dessert plates. The pink peonies are from a 19 th C wallpaper and the background, an abstracted floral, is wrapping paper. The right panel is a “botanical”, subject matter appropriate for a woman artist but here rendered in a brut fashion (the angry botanical), in black, with pink-dotted ‘pollen’ atmosphere (not pretty). All elements refer to the expectations and travails of women. An armless woman ponders her life as a goddess, attuned to nature rather than the responsibilities of decoration, gift giving and dessert presentation; indignantly isolating a plant specimen from nature to render in response. Narrative in character, my work often originates from a selection of images gleaned from piles of collected ephemera, items of interest. The challenge is combining elements to find meaning as imagery shifts from real to surreal. If I choose it, there must be an underlying concept. Coexistence equals connection.
Artists Bio
While studying Fine Arts at the University of Texas, Austin in 1973, Stinsmuehlen- Amend was serendipitously introduced to glass and went on to become partner and designer of Renaissance Glass, an architectural glass studio. Beyond teaching and employing fourteen artists, she built a creative hub that included studio space, glass supplies, a hot glass studio, education and exhibitions. Understanding the cutting edge in the field, Stinsmuehlen-Amend invited luminaries in the Studio Glass Movement-Dale Chihuly, Paul Marioni, William Morris, Narcissus Quagliata among others-to lecture and teach in the early eighties. The studio became the center for contemporary glass in Texas from 1973 to 1987. While balancing single motherhood, donating time to the arts, and running her business, she became the Glass Art Society’s first woman president (1984-86). She invited James Turrell (1983) and Ettore Sotsass (Memphis Design Group, 1984) as keynote speakers to broaden the scope of dialogue.
Concurrent with designing stained glass commissions, Stinsmuehlen-Amend was determined to make the craft form a means for personal expression. Through experimentation and rebellion and influenced by the local punk scene, her radical fashion designer best friend, Pattern & Decoration and Neo-Expressionism in art, as well as innovations in the world of craft, her work became unrestrained, kinetic, glittery, and jarring—defiantly not “tasteful” or functional. Combining mixed media with glass was a ”new” idea at the time. For Stinsmuehlen-Amend, the shifting qualities of glass itself—its capacity to reveal, obscure, reflect, and distort—became integral to how meaning unfolds. Rooted in stained glass’s narrative tradition, her story emerged through her everyday stream of consciousness rooted in the surreal logic of dreams.
In 1987, Stinsmuehlen-Amend relocated to Los Angeles, where she became a full-time artist; solo exhibitions and dynamic public art commissions followed. She was the lead artist on the Hollywood Demonstration Project in Hollywood, completing a precast concrete crosswalk with inlaid glass and bronze and an adjunct wrought iron public space. In 1994, she completed leaded glass for the AT&T corporate headquarters and The Jewish Museum in New York City. Throughout these decades, she maintained her commitment to teaching, returning to Pilchuck Glass School repeatedly (1980-2019) and serving as a visiting artist at RISD, RIT, Tyler School of Art, California College of the Arts, and numerous other institutions.
Her work is included in major collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of the Arts, Oakland Museum of California, Corning Museum of Glass, Tacoma Museum of Glass, Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Museum of Art and Design, NY. She has received two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Pilchuck Hauberg Fellowships, and the 2007 Brychtová Libenský Award. She served fourteen years on Pilchuck’s Board of Directors and is a Trustee Emeritus of The American Craft Council and an Honorary Life Member of the Glass Art Society. Stinsmuehlen-Amend has recently (2026) been recognized as a Fellow of the Council by the American Craft Council for outstanding contributions to the crafts in America.
Website
CV available upon request