Susan is pleased to report that Endless Glow II is going to a new home and ARTFORWATER raised $1.2 million for Waterkeeper Alliance!!! Congratulations to one and all!
Here’s a glimpse of the commitment to clean water and fun shared on March 5 at the auction.
Here’s an opportunity to own Endless Glow II, a Susan Swartz Original Acrylic on Linen painting, while supporting Waterkeeper Alliance, the world’s largest and fastest growing clean water advocacy group. Susan, a longtime proponent of eliminating toxins from our rivers and oceans, is proud to join this amazing group of artists and activists in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Clean Water Act.
Hosted by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Jeff Koons, the ARTFORWATER live auction will include a special performance by Deborah Harry on Monday, March 5, 2012 at 6:30 pm at the Matthew Marks Gallery, 522 West 22nd Street, New York City.
Bidding has begun at the online auction and will close on Sunday, March 4 at noon.
Want to see Endless Glow II and bid in person? Contact Liz@livetreichard.com
Endless Glow II 20 x20
In the midst of Sundance 2012, Susan is delighted to report that the Impact Partners film and Sundance 2011 award winner Hell and Back Again has been nominated for the 2012 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Embedded in Afghanistan, photojournalist and filmmaker Danfung Dennis reveals the devastating impact a Taliban machine-gun bullet has on the life of a 25-year-old US Marine Sergeant. The film seamlessly transitions from stunning war reportage to an intimate, visceral portrait of one man’s personal struggle at home in North Carolina, where he confronts the physical and emotional difficulties of re-adjusting to civilian life. Contrasting the intensity of the frontline with the unsettling normalcy of home, the film lays bare the true cost of war.
Susan is proud to part of this extraordinary group of filmmakers and supporters with impact.
Visit Susan’s website to view her new Film Production page.
Susan and her husband, Jim, are co-founders of Impact Partners, a philanthropic venture organization that supports independent films that address pressing social issues. Over the years, films they have supported have gone onto screen at major festivals all over the planet and to win significant accolades, including Academy Awards.
Now, Impact Partners is thrilled to announce that three of its newest films will premiere this month at the Sundance Film Festival in Susan’s hometown of Park City, Utah. One of the films, called The Queen of Versailles, is being further honored as the opening night film that sets the tone for the entire festival. Directed by Lauren Greenfield, the documentary follows a couple building the biggest house in America—a 90,000 sf. palace inspired by Versailles—when their timeshare empire falters due to the economic crisis. Their rags-to-riches-to-rags story reveals the innate virtues and flaws of the American Dream.
Also showing for the first time at Sundance is David France’s documentary, How to Survive a Plague. This is the untold story of the intensive efforts that turned AIDS into a manageable condition, and the improbable group of (mostly HIV-positive) young men and women whose resilience broke through a time of rampant death and political indifference.
Veteran Sundancers, co-directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady return this year with Detropia (formerly titled Detroit Hustles Harder). Their latest documentary explores the idea that the woes of Detroit are emblematic of the collapse of the U.S. manufacturing base. This is the dramatic story of a city and its people who refuse to leave the building, even as the flames are rising.
Now in its 34th year, the Sundance Film Festival has evolved to become what is arguably the most meaningful celebration of independent cinema on the planet. “I feel incredibly blessed to have this wellspring of insight, creativity and important conversation in my own backyard,” says Susan. “Jim and I are honored to have supported these three tremendous films and look forward to the world’s response to them.”
Monthly throughout the exhibition of Susan’s Seasons of the Soul at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), the museum is presenting a documentary film series titled Linking Environment, Healing and Creativity. Already this summer, two important films have screened: The Science of Healing with Dr. Esther Sternberg and A Healthy Baby Girl.
And, still to come are two excellent recent documentaries. Screening on September 12 is The Last Mountain. Hailed as a clarion call to protect the environment and our own health, the film is directed by Bill Haney and focuses on a group of West Virginia citizens and their ongoing battle with Big Coal corporations.
Closing the film series on October 2 is No Impact Man, a film by Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein that follows a Manhattan-resident during his yearlong effort to eliminate his impact on the environment. For 12 months he ate vegetarian; bought locally; stopped using elevators, television, cars, buses, and electricity; and brought his wife and two-year-old daughter along for the ride.
To learn more about the film series, click here: NMWA
As an environmental and humanitarian activist, Susan knows that documentary film can be one of the most powerful mediums for shedding light on pressing social issues. That’s why Susan and her husband, Jim, are founding members of Impact Partners, a unique organization that brings together filmmakers and investors. In recent years, Impact Partners has helped fund important and award-winning films like THE COVE, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, THE GARDEN and FREEHELD.
And this year, Susan is proud to announce that three Impact Partner films will be premiering next month at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Held in and around Park City, Utah on January 20-30, Sundance is considered the preeminent independent film festival in the nation, if not the world.
!Women Art Revolution
Screening within the festival’s New Frontier category for boundary-pushing, multimedia works, this is groundbreaking documentary project that excavates the evolution of the feminist art movement in America. Director Lynn Hershmann Leeson was an active participant in this movement and has spent 42 years documenting it.
Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death and Technology
Tiffany Shlain’s vibrant and insightful documentary explores the visible and invisible connections linking major issues of our times–the environment, consumption, population growth, technology, human rights, the global economy–while searching for her place during a transformative time in her life. Shlain constructs a chronological tour of Western modernization through the work of her late father, Leonard Shlain, a brain surgeon and best-selling author of Art and Physics and The Alphabet Versus the Goddess.
Miss Representation
This documentary uncovers a glaring reality we live with every day but fail to see. While it’s clear the mainstream media objectifies women, most of us don’t realize the magnitude of the phenomenon and the way objectification gets internalized and impedes girls and women from realizing their full potential. Director Jennifer Siebel Newsom combines stories from teenage girls with provocative interviews with notable like Condoleezza Rice, Nancy Pelosi, Katie Couric and Gloria Steinem.
In the early 1970’s, a mysterious illness was discovered among children living around the town of Lyme, CT. What was first diagnosed as isolated cases of juvenile arthritis, eventually became known as Lyme disease, one of the most misunderstood and controversial illnesses of our time. Today, the Centers for Disease Control admits that more than 400,000 people may acquire Lyme disease each year, a number ten times greater than AIDS and West Nile Virus combined. And yet, the medical establishment–with profound influence from the insurance industry–has stated that the disease is easily detectable and treatable, and that “chronic Lyme” is some other unrecognized syndrome or a completely psychosomatic disorder.
During her own struggles with Lyme disease, Susan has battled not just physical symptoms, but a startling ignorance about the illness that pervades the medical community. As she fights to regain her health, she grows ever more resolute in her desire to shed light on both the disease and the fog of secrecy and misunderstanding that surrounds it. In order to help spread awareness about the disease, Susan and her husband, Jim, executive produced the impactful documentary film, Under Our Skin.
Directed by Andy Abrahams Wilson, Under Our Skin is a gripping and often terrifying look not only at the science and politics of the disease, but also the personal stories of those whose lives have been affected and nearly destroyed. The recipient of multiple awards, including Best Documentary at the Houston International, Somona, Durango, Talking Pictures and Camden International Film Festivals, as well as a finalist for the Audience Choice Award at the Tribeca Film Festival, Under Our Skin was further honored by being named as a semifinalist for the 2010 Academy Awards.
“Susan has been a friend and fierce advocate for Under Our Skin,” said Abrahams Wilson. “Her generosity and graciousness stand out, especially considering her own struggle with Lyme disease. I have been moved and humbled by Susan’s courage and support, as well as her commitment to her own artistic soul and to the healing of herself and others”.
For more information about the film or to purchase a DVD, visit http://www.underourskin.com.
Under Our Skin is also available for rental through Netflix.
Susan’s recent solo exhibition at the Springville Museum of Art brings to mind her first showing of the Natural Revelations exhibition at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) in 2008. Wrote UMFA museum director, David Dee: “While grounded in the real world of nature, Susan Swartz’s work also connects us to the pure energy and devotion to color that have characterized abstract art from the mid twentieth century.”
The UMFA exhibition ran January through April 2008, and the opening reception was a major gala fundraiser dedicated to expanding the museum’s exhibition and acquisitions program. “This was my first museum solo showing,” recalls Susan. “The highlight for me was the success of the opening reception fundraiser. I am glad my work could help create further support for the UMFA.” Then Utah Governor Jon Huntsman gave the opening remarks, while Keith Lockhart, musical director for the Utah Symphony and conductor for the Boston Pops, acted as master of ceremonies. Dean William Graham from the Harvard Divinity School also spoke at the black tie gala.
David Dee sums up the exhibition in the forward to Natural Revelations: “Susan Swartz creates art that expresses her deep love of her craft, or nature, or the spiritual—and inspires us, as viewers, to pause and take stock of our own relationship to the earth, to the divine and to future generations that will inherit the globe we have inhabited.”
Susan Swartz creates vibrant landscape paintings from her studio in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains. An official artist of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games, she is well known to public and private collectors alike, and just wrapped a solo exhibition at the Springville Museum of Fine Arts in Utah.
There is an underlying energy and tension to Susan’s work that hints of her complex relationship with the natural environment. “Mankind’s carelessness with the natural world has had a very personal effect on me,” she explains. “It has nearly killed me two times.”
A decade ago, Susan was diagnosed with mercury poisoning, most likely from eating fish from contaminated waters. Six years later, she was struck with another environmentally bred illness: Lyme disease, probably contracted through an infected mosquito. “I came this close to dying,” Susan says. “My spiritual reverence for the natural world and my painting kept me going.”
Today, Susan still combats the effects of illness, but has found new purpose both in and out of the studio. She is an activist who works with renowned environmental crusaders, like Dr. Jane Goodall and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who writes that Susan “captures what is both sacred and divine in nature…in her work I find refuge and inspiration.” Susan serves on the board of the Harvard Divinity School and the Salt Lake Film Center, is a trustee of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and co-founded the charity-based The Christian Center in Park City.
Since becoming ill, Susan has also become deeply involved in the production of documentary films that seek to shed light on an injustice. Films touched by Susan include Academy Award nominees and winners, as well as Sundance Film Festival award winners.
Susan’s ordeals have also inspired a change in her artwork. “While my illnesses wreaked tremendous havoc on body and spirit, they also shook me out of my comfort level as an artist,” she says. “The art I am now creating is more impassioned, more profound, more achingly full of desire than anything I have created in the past.”
