Always the odd ball in a crowd, Suzanne Clem-Wheeler finally figured out how to enjoy that advantage.
Before computers were readily available to the general population at any amount of affordability (and speed!) she was fascinated with them. Her first computer was a Commodore Vic-20 with a black and white television as the monitor. Data was stored on a cassette tape. You could run a marathon and come in dead last before it would finish doing what you asked it to do.
Because she is so comfortable as an artist and loves her computers, both a Mac and a PC, she can speak to most computer users in descriptives that make sense to them. Binary code has no place in her vocabulary.
It’s all about understanding the repetitions and rhythms between the different computer uses. It’s about seeing the patterns and similarities to existing practices as they apply to the mouse and keyboard. Artist speak.
Her gift is introducing computers to users, mostly artist, in a dialogue that is easy to understand and helps the user relax and become friends with their computer.... or least they learn to tolerate the darn thing.
She is an award winning speaker who has been a guest teacher and speaker at workshops and is now ready to teach all her friends who aren’t “friends” with the computer how to fall in love with it. She offers education for all levels from “This is a mouse....” to “cut and paste this HTML code here to get this....”
Returning to metro-Atlanta in 2005 after living out of state for four years she was received with great enthusiasm by fine art collectors who recognized the genius of what she was offering in portraiture. Her award winning artwork is in collections around the world, and she continues to paint portraits for a few families.
In 2009 she was living in a moderate fog after losing two close family members very unexpectedly. To soothe her soul Suzanne pulled out some long unused tubes of paint and started maniacally painting.
She jumped on an opportunity to go on an adventure in Europe in July of 2009. There she travelled solo from Amsterdam to Bologna, spent a week at an artist’s retreat in Branik, Slovenia, plein air painting, pondered the Peggy Guggenheim collection of Modern Art in Venice and traversed the bridges over the river Arno in Florence.
On a whim, in the fall of 2009, she entered a competition with one of her landscape mixed media pieces of a canal in Amsterdam and was pleasantly surprised to receive an Honorable Mention, one of fifteen awards given to the nearly one thousand entrants in the international competition.
As a child entering art contest, victories were thought to be the result of tidiness not superior artistic ability. Even as a precocious kindergarden student, Suzanne Clem-Wheeler risked academic advancement by contending the black crayon outline should be last not first in the coloring sequence. How else were you going to fix the spots you extended outside the lines with color?
Now painting outside the lines is part of what she reaches to do as she explores the melding of traditional and contemporary art tools. Today she continues to paint and show in a variety of media, teaches and is writing a book intended for artist who use computers to enhance their art and business practices.
Recent Exhibitions:
Bucks County Gallery of Fine Art, New Hope, PA
Hudgens Center for the Arts, Duluth, GA
Tannery Row Artists Colony, Buford, GA
Kai Spa, Johns Creek, GA
Offices of Greenleaf Services CEO, Buford, GA.
Digital Arts Studio, Atlanta, GA
Captain Planet X-mas Party, Atlanta, GA
Taste of the Nation, Atlanta, GA
