Susan Kristoferson 17 April 1952 – 6 July 2024

Susan Kristoferson died on 6 July 2024 from an aggressive form of ovarian cancer, 17 days shy of our 41st wedding anniversary.  Over the 43 years that I spent with her, I observed her growth as an artist, conversed with her about the processes of making art, the techniques, the magic.  She was captivated by the mysteries of colour evinced by the ever-changing patterns of light dancing across the foothills and mountains near our home in southern Alberta.  She equated the transitions as metaphors of human relationships across scales from interpersonal to global, current, and past.  And it was the ephemerality that informed her art.

When not engaged in art, and when the weather permitted, Susan tended her flower gardens.  She loved nothing more than to be on hands and knees working the soil, coddling the bulbs or seedlings, admiring the bumblebees and butterflies that came for a visit, pausing for the hovering hummingbird, transplanting mature plants, pruning established shrubs, extracting pesky weeds, arranging them to make bold statements of colour that would pop throughout our short growing season, each on its own time.

Susan had long threatened to write the historic Paste-paper, but she was an artist, not a writer.  Over the next few months, I will be preparing a biography of Susan, her insatiable drive to learn about historic Paste-paper techniques, and more.  It will not be the book she planned to write.  Rather, it will be my attempt to detail her artistic journey.

The following poem emerged from me a few weeks after her passing as I grieved.

A Gentle Force

Sunrise greeted her.

Shifting colours splashed

across mountain peaks

chasing darkness from valleys.

Steam rising from a cup of tea,

Luna’s chin resting on knee.

A contemplative start to the day.

Routine tasks tackled,

a prelude to the day’s focus.

A stroll to her studio, her hermitage,

the scramble of unformed ideas

emerge through her hands

as decorated papers begin to form

fleeting relationships, somehow

infused in her from the morning light.

Susan Kristoferson

Everything that Susan Kristoferson creates is based on the relationship of parts.  The relationships may be personal, environmental, philosophical, color and design, or even from aspects of astrophysics.  For Susan it is the relationships between parts, between atoms, and between people, that are the basis and important elements and aspects of life.

Susan hand paints and dyes papers to create an extensive palette for her unique collages and fine craft objects.   Starting at the age of 4 or 5 Susan began a lifetime of  being a maker.  She had an early interest in sewing and textiles and has earned BFA and MFA degrees.

She is skilled in textile arts and hand paper-making and has been an art teacher, art professor, and head of a college fibre arts program. She now works with specialty papers that often look like fabric.  Shown in more than 200+ exhibits, her work is in collections across the US, in Japan and Canada.

Specializing in unique hand dyed and painted papers, Susan creates complex collage “paintings” and unique paper objects such as origami ornaments, blank books, notecards and jewelry.  She sells her sheets of hand decorated paper and packages of “off cuts” and overpainted scrapbook papers for other people to use.  Susan is writing a book about the history of paste paper based on 30 years of research and study at over 40 rare book and rare paper collections around the world.  She also up cycles materials to make useful items.

Her work can be found in Alberta at Bluerock Gallery in Black Diamond, Collectors’ Gallery in Calgary, and at the two Alberta Craft Council Galleries which are in Calgary and Edmonton.  In 2020 sixty-one of her unique hand decorated papers were acquired by the Legacy Paper Collection of the Watson Library at the Metropolitan Art Museum in New York City. 

She has lived in England, Denmark, in several places in the US, and now happily lives in the southern Alberta Foothills with an inspirational view of the foothills and Rockies from her hilltop home and studio.