Suzanne Klotz | Fine Artist and Fullbright Recipient

The world has been the inspiration for Suzanne Klotz, who graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1966 with a B.F.A. degree in painting. She has instituted multi-cultural art programs, workshops and exhibitions in Africa, Australia, Israel, Mexico, Palestine, Taiwan, the United States and, most recently Amman, Jordan. In Amman, on a Fulbright Scholar award, she created an art salon and ran a collaborative workshop with Palestinian women and their families who were dispossessed from their homes and were living in refugee camps.

“The Fulbright award provided the opportunity to expand my research pertaining to the status of Palestinian refugees and create a work of art that addresses Palestinian culture and traditional embroidery,” Klotz said. “The purpose of my project was to create an artwork that honors and preserves Palestinian culture and history, while informing viewers about the ongoing plight of Palestinian land ownership and national identity.”

Before traveling to Amman in 2013, Klotz spent a year creating the beaded, painted and embroidered border of an 8-foot-by-5-foot canvas. The border incorporated the names of all of the 246 Palestinian refugee camps in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan in Arabic calligraphy. In Amman, she has led a workshop entitled “Seven Women’s House Keys.” working in both traditional and conceptual art-making practices with seven Palestinian women and their family members. Throughout the year, she blogged about her experiences.

On returning home to Mesa, Ariz., she looked forward to working with a filmmaker and producer on a movie about her Amman experience and to pursuing exhibition opportunities for the “Seven Women’s House Keys” canvas and her other work.

Klotz’s appetite for international travel dates to a whirlwind family tour of Europe after she graduated from high school. “We visited every museum and cathedral mentioned in every European tourist guidebook,” she said. “This trip made me realize that there is a big world outside of the United States, and I made the decision to experience as much of it as possible.”

For more information about Klotz, visit http://suzanneklotz.com. For more information about her project in Amman, visit http://7womenshousekeys.wordpress.com.