Susanna Bauer

Susanna Bauer was born in Eichstätt Germany in 1969. She lives and works in Somerset, United Kingdom.

Bauer began her career as a landscape architect and later worked as a model maker for advertising, television, and films. During this latter period, she continued her own artistic practice and eventually studied art at Camberwell College of Art in London.

As a young child, Bauer learned to crochet but also spent time assembling miniature models of landscapes out of matchboxes. She also developed a love of nature and plants. However, it was at her time at Camberwell when all of these interests aligned, and she began experimenting with lace crochet and incorporating it with objects she found in nature.

Today, Bauer’s works fundamentally consist of two materials: found leaves and cotton string. The leaves are cleaned, often pressed, and then dried. It is then the artist embellishes the leaf with crochet to give it a new life or a new story. Sometimes a leaf has a part missing so she fills in this gap with the crocheted threads. Or it may be that she creates a circle in a leaf and, by crocheting behind the veins of the leaf, the circle of white cotton thread seems to be a full moon behind a tree.

Bauer seeks to explore themes including the value of time and preciousness of objects. Her traditional crochet technique, relying on tension, is set in direct relationship to the fragile and natural material. The resulting forms are a meditation on the beauty and intricacy found in the natural world and a reflection of complex and tender relationships both within our environment and ourselves.