Susan Austin is a creator, community volunteer, and fiber artworks program founder at the Barn in Mariemont. Susan combines artmaking with group activities and holds a communal space for creative expression through fiber artwork: weaving, knitting, sewing, and quilting. She enjoys the creative process of making something out of nothing, embracing mistakes, and appreciating beauty. She says every piece of art is unique, and although ideas and materials may be similar, they are imagined in brave and bold new ways of self-expression.

Interview by Kelly Carrigan. Photography by Stacy Wegley.

What’s appealing about being an artist and a volunteer fiber art coordinator at the Barn?

It's kind of a self-given name, because they didn't know what to call me. The Barn did not have a fiber art program, so five years ago I approached the director, Lynn Long, to start it here.

I was a professional person in a pretty stressful job and also raising children. Fiber art became my calming and fun creative outlet. And I created some pretty cool things and started exploring that side of myself. As my children got older, I started thinking, “Well, I love this so much, so I should explore all kinds of different fiber art.” So I did. I started weaving. I started knitting. I had sewn for about 45 years and quilted for about 30 years. And I thought, “There's nothing like this on the East Side of Cincinnati – I should let people know about fiber art.” So I started doing that. I enjoy it when people come to the Barn and they’re excited about it, or they really like an exhibit we have.

What do you enjoy the most about teaching art classes?

I love to see something created out of nothing. It's that whole idea that you have a blank sheet of paper and you make something cool. To have a quilt come out of a stack of three different colors of fabric plus white is pretty amazing. And it's the same thing with yarn: You take a ball of yarn and all of a sudden you can have a beautiful hat or a beautiful sweater. And with weaving, you can create a wonderful rug for your floor or a scarf to wear. You can knit mittens for wintertime.

I think photographers get that same excitement over what they do; they have an empty disk and then they have wonderful pictures. Likewise, painters have a palette of paint and an empty painting surface to create beautiful things. The excitement of people looking at fiber artwork and “getting it” is really fun, because we've had some very high-quality fiber art shows here. People are amazed at the stitching, quilting, or creativity of the piece.

How do you share your artwork and encourage others to share their artistic creations?

Well, I'm better at sharing ideas about artwork than I am at actually showing my own artwork. I'll have a great idea and great colors to work with, but it doesn't always get to the finish stage. But I encourage others to finish their projects.

Fiber art, a lot of times, will take you into the unknown.

One of the more creative things I did was a Christmas present, years ago now. I couldn't think of anything to give my husband, and Christmas is his favorite time of the year. So I made a queen-size quilt with old photographs of all of our Christmases since we had children. I took all these photos and transferred them onto blank white fabric to create a border, and then I took our yearly Christmas card pictures and made those into a tree in the center, and embroidered my children’s four favorite things they could remember about Christmases growing up. And it was very meaningful to my husband; it’s still one of his favorite gifts.

How do current events and all of the changes going on in our current society affect fiber artists’ work?

There is one woman in our group who’s African American and has been deeply affected by the recent [deaths of] George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, so she created a very cool quilt about Black Lives Matter as a creative outlet.

There are also international quilting competitions that give you a topic. Black Lives Matter hasn't been a topic yet, but I bet it will be. There have been topics in the past... for example, [a few years ago] one competition put out a call for a special exhibit for quilts with artwork on how people felt about immigration. They assembled these small quilt blocks into one huge quilt that would be probably the size of a bedroom or living room wall, which is always a really fun challenge.

Is artwork healing?

Yes. In fact, there's quite a few online quilt groups where women – and men, too – will talk about working through the death of a spouse or a close friend or family member by stitching and knitting. Quilting, knitting, and weaving are repetitive processes that you can kind of get lost in and think about other things to take away some of the sense of loss. There's also a lot of people who will do a quilt in memory of a loved one that includes mementos from a person's life. But it doesn't have to always be about loss. T-shirt quilts are very, very popular. A lot of people will knit their school colors into a cap or make a cardigan for football or basketball games.

What does authenticity mean to you?

Authenticity is your own creative process. Sometimes, it's your interpretation of another person's art that might have you come up with an idea of your own. In weaving and quilting, you certainly can take someone's idea and come up with a very cool quilt that looks nothing like the other person's artwork. You can give each weaver four different colors of yarn and I can pretty much guarantee that unless they're following a pattern, every single scarf will look different. Fiber art, a lot of times, will take you into the unknown.

Bad art happens and is part of an artist's career. What is your philosophy about it?

It can be reversed when you slow down. That's why you unknit knitting mistakes. With weaving, you unweave any mistake you make with your feet and your hands and you always learn from your mistakes. Thankfully, mistakes in fiber aren't that bad and your investment isn't that much, although it can get quite pricey. In fiber, you can pretty much undo everything you've done – though it's very annoying when you have to, so you learn very quickly not to make those mistakes!

I was in healthcare in my previous career, which is a very scientific, rigid format. When you're working in healthcare, you have to follow the rules, the doses, and the diagnosis. In fiber art, you don't have rules – you make up your own rules for the most part.

I love to see something created out of nothing. It's that whole idea that you have a blank sheet of paper and you make something cool.

Sometimes I’ll show [a student] something I've done and point out what I did wrong and could have done better. I use the color wheel a lot when they're going to be designing something on their own to talk about colors that play well together and I'll show them the mistakes I've made. I think everything is cool. I mean, you're making this out of nothing. And this whole program started out of nothing. I had a budget of zero. I had the support of one person and the board really didn't know what I was doing. And it became this cool thing.

What are some of the struggles of being an independent artist and volunteer?

Funding. I mentioned I had no budget. When I had this idea to start a fiber art place on the East Side, I started asking everybody I knew for a $5 donation – everybody got a tax receipt and a thank you letter – and then bought looms. I started out teaching weaving classes and I kept donating the money from the classes into a fiber fund for the Barn. And from that, I brought in a very good quilt artist to have an exhibition at the Barn. Then, I got connected with the Cherrywood fabric company in Minnesota and we've been hosting their international traveling quilt challenges that includes 200 quilts each year. We do accept donations, which go into the fund for the next year's program. I'm always thinking a year ahead to bring these things to Cincinnati for everybody to enjoy – not just fiber artists.

Who is an influential woman in your life?

Well, it's actually a group of women. When I was 22, I was working nights in an emergency room, and it was always very hectic and busy. I was looking for an outlet and wanted to learn how to do something, such as make a quilt. I met with a group of five or six ladies at the library every Wednesday in a suburb of St. Louis. I went there every Wednesday, and those women, who were all at least 20 years older than me, taught me to quilt and became my closest friends and very influential people in my life.

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Susan Austin: Creating Something Out of Nothing