Susan Hoffman is an American

quilt art Quilt art, sometimes known as art quilting, mixed media art quilts or fiber art quilts, is an art form that uses both modern and traditional quilting techniques to create art objects. Practitioners of quilt art create it based on their experienc ...

ist.

Life

She began quilting while still in high school, and with her friend and fellow quilt artist

Molly Upton Martha Neill Upton (September30, 1953, Pittsfield, MassachusettsMarch30, 1977, San Francisco, California) was a watercolorist, sculptor and studio quilt artist. Her quilted tapestries helped quilts become seen as fine art, rather than craft work ...

, opened a small shop to sell artwork in her hometown in Vermont. Hoffman attended college at the

University of Denver The University of Denver (DU) is a private research university in Denver, Colorado, United States. Founded in 1864, it has an enrollment of approximately 5,700 undergraduate students and 7,200 graduate students. It is classified among "R1: D ...

. Hoffman and Upton lived as roommates in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is a suburb in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, located directly across the Charles River from Boston. The city's population as of the 2020 United States census, ...

after college, and began quilting together, making related quilts that they eventually termed "the pair collection." In 1975, their ''Third Pair''—Hoffman's "Moonlit" and Upton's "Greek"—were selected for inclusion in a Japan installation of the seminal 1971 Whitney Museum exhibition curated by Jonathan Holstein, ''Abstract Design in American Quilts''. Beginning in the mid-1970s, Hoffman and Upton were represented by the Kornblee Gallery, known in the 1960s and 1970s for representing young artists who went on to great prominence. They were the first quilt artists to be represented by a New York gallery. Their 1975 exhibition received favorable reviews, including one by Ann-Sargent Wooster in ''Artforum'', who noted Hoffman's "concern with subtleties of color" and her use of "units of cloth for chromatic abstractions similar to those of the German expressionists and Kupka."

Exhibitions

* ''Abstract Design in American Quilts'', Japan, 1975 * ''The New American Quilt'', Museum of Contemporary Crafts, New York, 1976 * ''Quilts by Radka Donnell, Susan Hoffman, and Molly Upton'', Carpenter Center for the Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 1975 * Joint show with Molly Upton, Kornblee Gallery, New York, NY, 1976 * Solo Exhibition, Kornblee Gallery, New York, NY, 1980 * Peter Hoffman & Susan Hoffman, Southern Vermont Art Center, 2018 * ''The Quilted Canvas II'',

New England Quilt Museum The New England Quilt Museum, founded in 1987, is located in downtown Lowell, Massachusetts and is the only institute in the Northeastern United States solely dedicated to the art and craft of quilting. It is the second-oldest quilt museum in the ...

, Lowell, MA 2018

Citations

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 20th-century American textile artists 20th-century American women textile artists 20th-century American women artists American quilters Textile artists from Vermont University of Denver alumni {{US-artist-stub