By: Raven Mrozek
Susan Worsham, born in Richmond, Virginia, is considered to be a recent emerging artist. She took her first photography class in college while she was studying graphic design. Her work is both metaphorical and aesthetically soft and stunning. I am in love with her interpretation on memory and how she combines both beauty and loss together into a single image.
Bittersweet on Bostwick Lane is Susan Worsham's series that most directly speaks to this idea of both the beauty and loss in a memory. Worsham discussed in her artist statement how she has lost bother of her parents, however the suicide of her brother is what makes its way into her works and shapes the way she photographs. I noticed she incorporated honeysuckle, stains, and red in a lot of images metaphorically tying together the loss and the beauty. Worsham shared the first line of her brothers suicide letter which said "I arrived home just about the time the honeysuckle blooms" which made me as a viewer create a connection with the use of the honeysuckle. She expressed how beautiful yet sad it was that her brother took in the beauty of his surroundings knowing it would be his last time. This loss and attention to beauty seeped into this series Bittersweet on Bostwick Lane. The sweet memories Worsham incorporated in the series were buttering her brother's bread growing up, homemade strawberry jelly, the intangible landscape, and sweet flowers. There is a sense of poetry in how she photographs.
By The Grace of God is another beautiful series of Susan Worsham that I enjoy. The title of this series comes from the old saying "American by birth, southern but the grace of god." Her series explores her past home from the neighbor yards to the hospitality of the surrounding peoples, and the character strangers had in welcoming her into their home and telling their story.
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