Suzanne Klotz was raised in LaGrange, Illinois and Leawood and Olathe, Kansas. Upon completing her high school education at Shawnee Mission East in 1962 she attended Washington University’s Fox School of Art in St Louis, Missouri for two years and then transferred to the Kansas City Art Institute where she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in 1966.
After earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree she studied Art Education at the University of Missouri Kansas City and was awarded Secondary Art Teaching Certification. After teaching art in public schools for four years in Boston, Massachusetts and Baldwin, Kansas she enrolled in the Graduate Fine Art Program at Texas Tech University, Lubbock where she was awarded a Masters of Fine Arts Degree with Honors in 1972.
Teaching
Her higher education teaching career included a full time faculty appointment at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas followed by two and one year appointments as Visiting Artist Associate Professor of Fine Arts at Scripps College and Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California; University of Texas San Antonio, Corpus Christi State University, Arizona State University, University of Utah, California State University Stanislaus, TAFE College of the Riverland, Berri, South Australia, and the South Australia School of Aborigine Education, Adelaide.
International Work
Interspersed between her academic appointments Suzanne instituted multi-cultural art programs and exhibitions in Senegal and Burkina Faso, West Africa; Taipei, Taiwan; as well as numerous guest artist residencies in the United States, including Sun Valley Center for the Arts, Oklahoma Arts Institute and Lakeside Studio, Lakeside, Michigan. Klotz was an artist-in-residence and arts consultant for the South Australia Department of Aborigine Education at an Aboriginal Center in Berri, South Australia.
Throughout the 1990’s Klotz conducted art workshops in Palestinian refugee camps and arranged exhibitions and guest artist opportunities for Palestinian artists in the United States. In 2013-14 Suzanne was the recipient of a Middle East Fulbright Scholar Award in Jordan where she conducted and instituted a Palestinian women’s embroidery salon entitled 7 Women’s House Keys.
Awards
Klotz’s awards include grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Puffin Foundation, Change Inc, 3 New York Artists’ Fellowships, Capelli d’Angeli Foundation, 2 National Endowment for the Arts Craftsman Fellowships, National Endowment for the Arts Dance and Performance Fellowship, Arizona Artists’ 3-D Fellowship, Arizona Governor’s Award for Women Who Create and Educate, Arizona Governor’s City Improvement Award for a public park sculpture in Phoenix, Texas Tech University’s Most Distinguished 2-D Graduate Alumni Award, and an endowed fund for Palestinian Educators dedicated to Suzanne Klotz.
