Known for her portraiture and still-lifes, Susan Mikula has also received acclaim for her landscapes, female nudes and supersized diptychs. Critics have described her photographic art as “alluring,” “full of ominous beauty,” “complex” and “arresting.” Using Polaroid cameras exclusively, she relies only on available light and never crops her finished work.
Most recently she has been featured in two group shows at the Ferrin Gallery in Pittsfield, Massachusetts: “FRESH: New Art, New Artists” (currently) and “Women: Portrait + Figure” (March/April 2009) – and in the monograph “Susan Mikula, Photographs, 2008” published by Luxxus Press (Feb. 2009).
Last December/January, in Chelsea, New York City, her solo show sic transit at the CHC Gallery featured three- and four-foot-square Duraflex prints, face-mounted to Plexiglas. In the introduction to the monograph, painter Kaye Mahoney writes of the sic transit series, “The commonplace, the unimportant, the unnoticed or the ignored—part remembered and part forgotten—are imbued with feeling and meaning … infused with Mikula’s unique ability to photographically paint abstractions of the real world around us, and so to connect with the world within us. …they are like bridges to the spaces where we might experience our own dreams, memories, feelings or emotions.”
During the Summer of 2007, Mikula’s disquieting photographic installation, titled omnivore, was on view at The Office of Senator Rosenberg in the Boston State House. Fifty Polaroid original photographs—landscapes, portraits, abstract images, and scary mean little animals—were printed on Melamine plastic dinner plates and organized into place settings of 2 to 11. “Plates are both classical—like The State House itself—and familiar as a form. The images are abstract but also accessible and touchable and domestic,” said Mikula.
In September 2006, Mikula was applauded for 9 Portraits, her unique installation of nine color Polaroid portraits printed on nine-foot-tall swathes of industrial mesh and spotlighted for two days in the Exhibition Hall of the Three County Fairgrounds in Northampton, Massachusetts. Reviewers described it thus: “The expansiveness of [her] exhibit, and the unlikely setting...challenge[s] the learned way of looking at art,”1 and “...Mikula’s artwork overwhelms you with gentle light, impressionistic color and half remembered moments...The impact is undeniable...”2
Other solo shows include still, moving pictures (2005), Civil Twilight (2003), New Beauty (2002), After Reprimand (2001) and Lux in Tenebris (1998).
In 2004, Mikula curated and exhibited in Viva! Polaroid, a group show featuring the experimentation and innovation of eleven New England photographers, on display at the A.P.E. Gallery in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Mikula’s work has also been shown at the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach, Florida; the San Diego Art Institute; St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery in New York City; and State of the Arts '98 in Oregon. Her work has been selected for national juried exhibitions, and she is the recipient of three artist grants from The Northampton Cultural Council.
For more information about Susan Mikula, please go to susanmikula.com
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1. The Daily Hampshire Gazette, Northampton, Massachusetts (9/25/06)
2. The Valley Advocate, Easthampton, Massachusetts (9/28/06)