Susan Viguers
Susan Viguers is a writer, scholar and book artist whose teaching career at UArts (beginning when it was the Philadelphia College of Art) spans almost 50 years.
Biography
Susan Viguers earned her PhD in English from Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania. For decades, beginning in 1974, she taught literature and writing at UArts and for 13 years, directed the University Writing program. During that time she published extensive scholarship in Renaissance drama and children’s literature, creative nonfiction and poetry. Beginning in 1993, Viguers studied printmaking and bookbinding with faculty at the university and made artist books. She moved from Liberal Arts into the College of Art and Design and for nine years directed the MFA Book Arts/Printmaking program.
Experience
She has published two books: With Child (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) and, with Lily Yeh, Healing from Genocide in Rwanda (New Village Press). Her artist books and prints have been exhibited in numerous group and solo shows and are included in special collections at over 60 public institutions in the U.S. and abroad, including: Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; King St. Stephen Museum, Székesfehérvár, Hungary; Kyoto Institute of Technology, Japan; Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; Scripps College, Claremont, California; Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania; Wellesley College, Massachusetts; Yale University, New Haven Connecticut; and many of the University of California campuses.
She was a founding board member of the Philadelphia Center for the Book (PCB)—which until recently was the exhibition chair, and continues to coordinate PCB’s Artists’ Working Group meetings. She is also active in the College Book Art Association and is the sub-chair of the Theory and Criticism Committee, for which she handles the biweekly blog.
Awards & Accolades
Viguers has been recognized numerous times for her work.
- Venture Fund Awards and Faculty Development Grants, UArts
- Leeway Foundation Honorable Mention in Creative Nonfiction
- Scholarship/artist residency, Pendle Hill, Wallingford, Pennsylvania
- Artist Book Residency Grant, Women’s Studio Workshop, Rosendale, New York
- Several Purchase Prizes (for artist books)
- Lindback Award for Distinguished Teachers
- Richard C. von Hess Faculty Award
- Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency, Lake Como, Italy