Susan is pleased to unite her interests in combining artistic expression with activism through the ART AND SOCIAL JUSTICE exhibition, on view at Susan Swartz Studios (260 Main Street, Park City) until February 2, 2020.

If the history of the Earth were laid out on a clock, we humans would not appear until a minute before midnight as the writer Carl Sagan so aptly analogized in Cosmos. Despite our brevity on this planet, the impact of humankind has been disproportionately profound.

As part of the year long celebration of the 40th Anniversary of the Clean Water Act, today June 21st is Fishable Waters Action Day. Local Waterkeeper Alliance groups, fisherman and anyone interested in the health of their local waterways are fishing, boating or visiting their favorite water spot today. Susan, a longtime supporter of the work of Waterkeeper, urges everyone to join her in visiting their local stream, river, lake or ocean today to enjoy and observe its health.

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.

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.

To learn more about mercury contamination, Susan highly recommends Diagnosis, Mercury: Money, Politics & Poison, by physician Jane M. Hightower. In the book, Dr. Hightower retraces her investigation into the modern prevalence of mercury poisoning, revealing how political calculations, dubious studies, and industry lobbyists endanger our health. While mercury is a naturally occurring element, she learns there’s much that is unnatural about this poison’s prevalence in our seafood. Dr. Hightower’s tenacious inquiry sheds light on a system in which, too often, money trumps good science and responsible government. Susan suggests that Diagnosis: Mercury should be required reading for everyone who cares about their health.

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. “Twice I have struggled environmentally caused illnesses.”