The UNC graduate, who recently earned her Master of Fine Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University, now works in Richmond, Va., creating art to showcase in galleries in both Virginia and Chapel Hill. But before now, the artist wasn’t sure what she wanted.
“I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to be an art major,” Suggs said of her time at UNC. “But I had a lot of encouragement from two female professors who took me under their wings. They were huge supporters of what I was doing, and it felt right.”
With the guidance of Beth Grabowski and elin o’Hara slavick, Suggs found her current medium of choice through a job at Wilson Library, where she worked with preservation and the Rare Book Collection..
In 2011, Suggs took a vacation from her job at the Penland School of Crafts, and realized her art could be a larger part of her life.
“Not until I was 30 did I realize that people could be artists for a living. I always thought you had to pair something else with art,” Suggs said. “It hit me while I was working that I could do this, and this was what I wanted to do.”
Suggs currently has two exhibitions in Chapel Hill: one at LIGHT Art + Design, the gallery created by her former boss, Cindy Spuria, and one at the Horace Williams House. Both are solo shows.
At the Horace Williams House, the art program aims to showcase local artists’ work in their gallery space. The committee chooses artists and then sends a representative to help prepare for the show..
Renee Leverty, the member of the committee who worked with Suggs, said she liked Suggs’ ability to make a complex work simple.