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About Susan Kliewer
AAIA, Inc. is proud to represent Susan Kliewer of Sedona, Arizona
Susan Kliewer
Spending her childhood in southern California, Susan Kliewer showed early art talent which was encouraged by her family. For eight years, she prepared sculpture for bronze casting in a foundry for well-known Arizona sculptors John Hampton, Joe Beeler, and Buck McCain. In 1988, she decided to do her own sculpting, and in 1991 won the People's Choice Award at the juried National Sculpture Walk in Sedona, Arizona.
A key mentor has been Ken Ottinger at the Sedona Art Center, and she also took anatomy classes at Northern Arizona State University. Her subjects are Navajo people, many whom have become close friends.
Susan Kliewer, one of the Southwest's most acclaimed contemporary sculptors has made Arizona her home for 40 years. She spent five of those years at the Marble Canyon Trading Post in a remote area of Northern Arizona, adjacent to the Navajo Reservation. A painter since the age of ten, Susan turned to sculpting in 1987, after working in an art casting foundry for ten years.
In 1993 Susan won a competition to create a monument of Sedona Schnebly. A ten-foot high sculpture of her town’s namesake was installed in front of the Sedona City Library. Kliewer's life-size fountain portraying the Sinagua people and a fountain of a Hopi Water Maiden are also to be found in Sedona. Other sculptures by Susan Kliewer are located in the US and Europe. Susan often uses her Navajo friends and relatives as models to capture the special intimacy which is a hallmark of her work. Her depiction of cowboys and Indians in everyday life, from the past as well as the present are, as one critic said, “Truly heartfelt”. “My work”, she says, “aims to show the common thread that underlies all human experience, and which, I hope, brings us to a greater understanding between all peoples”.
Spending her childhood in southern California, Susan Kliewer showed early art talent which was encouraged by her family. For eight years, she prepared sculpture for bronze casting in a foundry for well-known Arizona sculptors John Hampton, Joe Beeler, and Buck McCain. In 1988, she decided to do her own sculpting, and in 1991 won the People's Choice Award at the juried National Sculpture Walk in Sedona, Arizona.
A key mentor has been Ken Ottinger at the Sedona Art Center, and she also took anatomy classes at Northern Arizona State University. Her subjects are Navajo people, many whom have become close friends.
Susan Kliewer, one of the Southwest's most acclaimed contemporary sculptors has made Arizona her home for 40 years. She spent five of those years at the Marble Canyon Trading Post in a remote area of Northern Arizona, adjacent to the Navajo Reservation. A painter since the age of ten, Susan turned to sculpting in 1987, after working in an art casting foundry for ten years.
In 1993 Susan won a competition to create a monument of Sedona Schnebly. A ten-foot high sculpture of her town’s namesake was installed in front of the Sedona City Library. Kliewer's life-size fountain portraying the Sinagua people and a fountain of a Hopi Water Maiden are also to be found in Sedona. Other sculptures by Susan Kliewer are located in the US and Europe. Susan often uses her Navajo friends and relatives as models to capture the special intimacy which is a hallmark of her work. Her depiction of cowboys and Indians in everyday life, from the past as well as the present are, as one critic said, “Truly heartfelt”. “My work”, she says, “aims to show the common thread that underlies all human experience, and which, I hope, brings us to a greater understanding between all peoples”.