Suzanne Peiffer

Suzanne Peiffer, our featured March artist, will do a sculpture demo at our general meeting 6:30 PM on March 19th. She’ll illustrate the steps from clay to bronze.

Peiffer began drawing at age 3. Her father was a frustrated cartoonist who doodled a lot, so she drew along with him. During high school she drew the yearbook illustrations. She was voted best artist in a class of 300+ students during her senior year. At 17 years old she left Lebanon, PA to study art seriously at the Moore Institute of Art, now known as Moore College of Art. She’d written a letter to the state senator and was awarded a senatorial scholarship. The dormitory was a 10-minute walk to the Rodin Museum, where she’d sit and draw sculptures. Also, “Philadelphia Museum outshines all museums; it inspired me”.

Married in Philly to a veteran, newlywed Suzanne then moved to Greenwich Village, where she lived for 26 years. She attended The New School there.

In 1968 she began spending summers in East Hampton, Long Island. Her house was around the corner from Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.

“Back then it was all fishermen, artists, and a few Manhattanites down for the weekend. It was a funky, laid-back community where people would skinny-dip in the bay”.

Suzanne frequented the small grocery store where Pollack traded small paintings for beer. The storeowner told her it was de Kooning on the bike daily, and that “Bill stopped driving his car after Jackon wrapped himself around that tree”. Eventually she moved there in 1985 and lived there for 14 years.

Just before leaving East Hampton in Nov 1999, in the exact geographic location he’d lived, they filmed the “Pollock” movie. They waited for a snowstorm to happen so they could complete a scene there, she remembers. It was then she moved to Palm Bay, where she lives with her partner of 16 years, a chef she met on the beach during a heat wave in the Hamptons. “I'm well-fed,” she laughs. Her sister has lived in the area for 27 years. She also has a stepdaughter from her 2nd marriage, and a grandson.

Suzanne admires sculptors Francisco Zuniga, Bruno Lucchesi, and especially Camille Claudel, Rodin’s mistress, who she feels was unsung because of her gender. “I think she was better than Rodin”. Suzanne Peiffer has been in various juried and members’ shows. Collectors from NY to CA have her work. She belongs to BMAS, Vero Beach Art Club, SAL, National Sculpture Society, and was a founding member of East End Sculptors Networking Group in East Hampton, NY.

Suzanne has only lived in Brevard County slightly over 3 years, but she was commissioned to do “Portrait of Riley” for a Mrs. Santos Castro, and the “Eye of the Artist” trophy for Best of Show in SAL’s Vision 2002 exhibition. She can be seen in last year’s Vision video making a short speech after receiving one of her several merit awards for “Attitude”, a distinctive bronze woman who looks ready for anything, which was televised on Channel 99. This year she won the SAL Vision Sculpture Award for “Time out”. In the short time this woman has lived here, she’s made a huge difference….…..at the SAL meeting we’ll really see the EYE of the Artist, won’t we??

Written by Siri German