Susan Clinard is a contemporary American sculptor. Her life-scale figurative sculptures combine found objects, carved wood elements and fired ceramic heads and hands. Her compositions tell stories, helps us connect and speak about our shared humanity. Clinard’s work reflects the times in which we live.

Susan’s sculptures were recently acquired by the Fenix Museum in Amsterdam, a major new museum inspired by stories of global migration. She is the winner of the National Hammerschalg carving award and the Art by the Northeast award for sculpture. She has been the artist in residence at the Eli Whitney Museum for the past twelve years. Susan has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Palette and Chisel Academy of Fine Arts. She has received substantial public commissions, and her sculptures can be found in many private and public collections worldwide. https://www.clinard.org/

“There is something intense yet poetic in the sensibilities of Clinard’s art work.… There is a clear luminosity to her work that is contemporary, yet incredibly timeless.… Her aesthetic places you in an artistic territory that creates a dialogue, causing viewers to stop in their tracks.”
— ART PLATFORM NYC 

“In Susan’s work, we see a deep appreciation for human history, for the eloquence of human gesture, as well as for the felt experience of individual lives. And we feel an obvious and contagious joy in what wood and wire, found objects and images, can come to reveal through the work of her hands and shaping spirit. She succeeds in illuminating both the overwhelming and underlaying connectivity of our world” Yale Daily News

 “Clinard’s work shows both empathy and immense technical proficiency, as if we have stepped from mid-polar vortex New Haven into Paris’ Musée Bourdelle, the quirky atelier of a monumental sculptor. The pieces keep us coming back not just because they are timely, but also because they are good. Indeed, Clinard has asked us to stare something in the face, and make her a promise in return. That we’ll be better, so someone else’s tomorrow can be too.” Arts Council