Biography

Susan Montgomery is an artist and educator who lives in Leverett, Massachusetts. Her art practice includes painting and drawing; however, the concept of the work often requires a multidisciplinary approach involving sculpture and installation. Her work focuses on the presentation of women in history, culture, and memory. The women she explores include heroes, decried antiheroes, literary figures, and other women regarded for their strength of vision or voice. Some of her subjects include the Radium Girls, Maria Sklodowska-Curie, Hester Prynne, Pope Joan, the Daughters of Saint Crispin, and Mary Bliss Parsons, the accused Witch of Northampton.

Her current work in the Poison series includes female protagonists who were associated with, accused, or convicted of poisoning. They are juxtaposed with a backdrop inspired by William Morris's arsenic-impregnated wallpaper designs and from visits to the Smith College Conservatory with her Drawing and Foundations classes while working with her students on the Into the Glasshouse project.

Montgomery is a recipient of the Blanch E. Coleman Award, Mellon Foundation, and Sustainable Artist Foundation Grant Award. She has exhibited her work at venues including the Fuller Art and Craft Museum, Museum of Springfield History at the Springfield Quadrangle Museums, Five College Women's Resource Center at Mount Holyoke College, Historic Northampton Museum, A.P.E. Ltd. Gallery and the Trustman Gallery at Simmons College.

Susan Montgomery is a Lecturer in Art at Smith College. As an educator, she has taught diverse audiences in various settings, including teaching undergraduate art at Westfield State University, CT State Community College at Asnuntuck, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has been a Faculty Mentor in the Graduate Program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and taught in the Graduate Program for Leslie College. She has run the art program at Westover Job Corps Center and taught College Preparatory Art in Poland.

EDUCATION

M.F.A. in Painting, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

B.F.A. in Printmaking, Hartford Art School, University of Hartford