 usan Tibbles is one of the leading assemblage artists working today. The art of assemblage has been around for more than a century. Futurists, Dadaists, Beat and Pop artists used assemblage to make political statements. Tibbles carries on this tradition. Her work operates on multiple levels, combining both text and metaphor, while she assigns dual meaning to seemingly everyday objects.
Tibbles was born in Santa Barbara, California where she still lives today. As a self-taught artist she spent over ten years exhibiting before in the fall of 2000 she caught the eye of Wes Bausmith, Art Director of the Los Angeles Times - Opinion Section. He asked Tibbles to create an image that would address the presidential race between Al Gore and George Bush. Since then Tibbles has made over 140 assemblages to appear as illustrations for the Opinion and Editorial Sections of the Los Angeles Times.
In addition to the Los Angeles Times series, Tibbles has produced assemblage artworks which have been exhibited at the Caruso/Woods Gallery, Santa Barbara, California; Patricia Correia Gallery, Santa Monica, California; Sue Greenwood Fine Art, Laguna Beach, California; Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, California; Amarillo Museum of Art, Amarillo, Texas and the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.
A solo exhibition of Tibbles’ work, from the private collection of Geoffrey Le Plastrier, is currently touring the Riverside Art Museum, Riverside, California; the Laband Art Gallery at the Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California and the Carnegie Art Museum in Oxnard, California.
Art Interview: How long have you been professionally working as an artist?
Susan Tibbles: I've been working since 1990 as an assemblage artist. And it was something that I stumbled across. I am self-taught. I have no formal training. One day, someone handed me a Joseph Cornell book. I'd never seen an assemblage before and I just flipped over the art. A year later, I was in a situation where I needed to work and have some fun so I started doing assemblages. I became addicted to it and I kept working and working and I loved it. I had my first solo show four months later. The first gallery I submitted to picked me up and sold my first piece. Two weeks later they offered me a show and I've been a working artist ever since.
Art Interview: Which gallery was that?
Susan Tibbles: It was a little gallery in Santa Barbara called ARTWORKS.
Art Interview: I’m not familiar with it. Is it still in existence?
Susan Tibbles: No, it isn't. Santa Barbara has a very conservative art market so the more contemporary art galleries have a difficult time there. I now exhibit at other galleries in California: Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Laguna Beach, San Francisco and also Santa Fe, New Mexico and New York.
Art Interview: Why did you decide to make art professionally?
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Susan Tibbles
Kid in War
Mixed Media
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Susan Tibbles: Art is something that I've always done since I was a child. I've always been artistically inclined.
Art Interview: What was it like for you growing up?
Susan Tibbles: I grew up in Santa Barbara, California, which is where I still live. As a child, I had art supplies and a bicycle, which are still the same things I work with, except now I have a sports car instead of a bike. I was just a regular kid trying to stay out of trouble, into making art. I was in all the art classes that were offered. Art has always been a part of my life.
Art Interview: Did your parents encourage you in your artistic ventures?
Susan Tibbles: My mother did. She was artistically inclined.
Art Interview: What did your father do for a living?
Susan Tibbles: He was a leather craftsman. But he was not part of the family. I don't recall very much about him.
Art Interview: Was your mother single or did she have a partner?
Susan Tibbles: My mother remained single.
Art Interview: So, you came out of a middle-class family?
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Susan Tibbles
Blame it on Mommy
Mixed Media
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Susan Tibbles: Yes. My mother had 3 children that she took care of. I have a brother and a sister. She put herself through university to get a teaching degree. Before that she was a seamstress. So I think a lot of that crossed over to my work as far as putting things together and using objects over and over, whether they're crochets or hooks or needles or patterns or fabrics...those types of things.
Art Interview: Did she teach you needlework when you were a child?
Susan Tibbles: No. I didn't have the patience for that. I always had crayons, paints and paintbrushes, pens and ink. As a kid I used to jump on my bike and hit all the thrift stores in Santa Barbara. Every Saturday I would see what I could get for 50 cents and come back with bits and pieces of little antique dolls that were chipped. I bought all of the vintage Victorian memorabilia that I could find. I started collecting a lot of things that later I assembled into artwork. As a little kid I actually had two trunks that I kept all my treasures in. I found them again in the basement of my mother's house when she died. A lot of those things were incorporated into my artwork 15 years later. It is kind of interesting to have collected things as a 10-year old and then to have incorporated them into art as a 40-year old. I suppose the memories and meaning behind all that gives the art an intrinsic intensity.
Those little things all permeated into my brain. I had forgotten where all these feelings and emotions came from but it seems that I continue to look for the same types of objects that I did as a child. Those old Victorian dolls that I couldn't afford to have as a kid made an impact on me. I could go to a thrift store and find whatever was broken or cracked and there would still be that beautiful face that I still could do something with.
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Susan Tibbles
Hope
Mixed Media
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Art Interview: Does your artwork hold nostalgic feelings for you?
Susan Tibbles: No! … Well yes and no. Sometimes it does. You know, the works are really time capsules of a day in my life or a year in my life. They are little pieces of emotions. I'm looking around at the studio right now and reflecting on some of these pieces, and I have to say they seem to be about a little girl, growing and traveling.
Art Interview: How did you end up going from California to Hawaii?
Susan Tibbles: When I was 18, I graduated from high school and moved to Colorado. I lived there for a number of years and then moved back to Santa Barbara, where I met my husband. He was a commercial and sports fisherman. He lived in Hawaii for 30 years or so where he had a boat and we went over to start a business. I was in Hawaii for about 5 years before I came back to Santa Barbara - I couldn't deal with living in Hawaii anymore. I am not very good in the islands. It was too relaxed for me. I keep coming back to Santa Barbara. I guess its home.
Art Interview: Did he come back with you?
Susan Tibbles: Yeah, he came back to Santa Barbara and we lived here for many years together before we divorced in 2001.
Art Interview: But you started creating assemblage work while you were in Hawaii?
Susan Tibbles: Yes. It was totally a surprise for me. I had no rhyme or reason for doing this artwork other than I was going stir crazy. My husband would go on his fishing trips for two or three weeks and when he came back I had all this artwork done. He encouraged me to keep doing it and submit them to a gallery. That is how it started. I had developed a habit that needed to pay for itself because I was working very prolifically creating between 3 or 4 pieces a week.
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Susan Tibbles
Compulsion
Mixed Media
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Art Interview: Were you holding a job at that time?
Susan Tibbles: Not other than assisting my husband with our boat business. There were things I helped him with but I wasn't working 9 to 5. We sold Yellow Fin Tuna to the Japanese market. Fishing is definitely a tough profession it’s very hard work. Ultimately, we sold the boat and came back to the mainland.
Art Interview: Once you created a body of artwork, what did you do with it?
Susan Tibbles: When it was suggested that I submit to a gallery, I was confused because I didn't think that anyone would be interested in buying the work nor was I interested in selling it. But I said what the hell... So, I hired a photographer and he took slides of the work because I heard that that was how you were supposed to do it. I had all the work photographed and I submitted a self-addressed stamped envelope with the slides to my first gallery. All I could put in it was my phone number and the slides because I had no shows, no background, no training. So, it was like... oh my gosh! I put my head down and threw them on the woman's desk and I said, “It's stamped there. You can return it to me if you are not interested”. But when I got home, there was a message on my answering machine and they said they would send someone over the next day to look at the work and pick out three pieces. I sold my first piece for a couple of grand. I had my first show 4 months later and I’ve just kept going ever since.
Art Interview: How many pieces were in your first show?
Susan Tibbles: Oh... the first show was probably 18 or so.
Art Interview: How large was your body of work at that time?
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Susan Tibbles
Valrie
Mixed Media
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Susan Tibbles: Maybe 25 pieces. That was it.
Art Interview: How did your first solo show go?
Susan Tibbles: I had no idea how my work would be received but I got good reviews right out of the gate. I sold a lot of work and got a lot of publicity and press. It was a turning point for me.
Art Interview: When you were married, did your husband support you?
Susan Tibbles: For a while. Then I started working as an artist and making my own money.
Art Interview: You really had no idea about how the art world worked when you began?
Susan Tibbles: None whatsoever. My work was something that was very personal and I never thought someone would want to buy it. It was a creative way of expressing myself. I never knew what it was saying until it was completed but it always had a message for me.
Art Interview: Has your message changed through the years?
Susan Tibbles: The art has gotten better. It's not so child-oriented. It's not such a girl thing anymore. It is still a little girl but I think she’s a little more grown up. After 9-11, the work that I’ve produced for the
Los Angeles Times Opinions Sections and Commentary Sections has dealt with such intense subjects for the last 4 or 5 years that it brought a new type of underlying darkness to the work.
Art Interview: Can you tell me a little bit about the LA Times job and how you got your first contract with them?
This oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Susan Tibbles on November 14, 2005. The interview took place over the telephone between Berlin, Germany and Santa Barbara, California, USA and was conducted by Brendan Davis for Art Interview Online Magazine.
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