Ghost Packets - Portraits of Connectivity

Suzanne Kelser, November 13th to December 22th, 2023

Suzanne Kelser (1955-2020) created drawings and collages reflecting her deep fascination with the invisible networks and hidden structures upon which so much contemporary American life and culture is dependent.

Kelser’s work as a programmer for financial companies spawned her interest in these intangible computer networks and she sought to form ‘portraits’ of these invisible environments so crucial to daily life. Her stark works on paper depict an alternative form of what websites, emails, and electronic storage might look like, reflecting their chaos, intensity, complexity and energy in frenetic and buzzing abstract images. 

Kelser described her process:

My drawings (begin by) researching the structure and mechanics of the Internet...(exploring)...arcane texts (defining) terms like connectivity, uniqueness, tolerance, and replication. I then invent visual methods to structure and display these technical theories (and their loose relationship with meaning and spoken language), depicting, through sometimes strange or arbitrary rules, our participation in a space where we are physically never present. 

These drawings reflect my understanding of an environment both supporting and valuing social isolation, where consumer transactions occur without human intervention and at the same time is used to form social communities. Ultimately, I seek to capture what we use and cannot see...(taking) a microscopic slice of this constant activity and distilling it as a physical form. 

Kelser limited her work to defiantly low-tech forms of drawing, the simplest and most direct method of art making, to generate snapshots and portraits of the invisible cyber landscapes so crucial to much of contemporary daily life and culture. Kelser was “aware of the timeless tradition of drawing, where one’s presence is materialized and recorded.”

These drawings reflect my understanding of an environment both supporting and valuing social isolation, where consumer transactions occur without human intervention and at the same time is used to form social communities. Ultimately, I seek to capture what we use and cannot see...(taking) a microscopic slice of this constant activity and distilling it as a physical form. 

Artist Biography

Suzanne Kelser was born and raised in New York. She attended CUNY and earned a BA from Queens College/CUNY. Her work has been exhibited at the Drawing Center, NURTUREart, the Islip Art Museum, the Kentler International Drawing Space, the Kingston Sculpture Biennial and Lesley Heller Gallery, among many others. She has shown in Connecticut and Brooklyn where her work has been reproduced in exhibition catalogs and reviewed by the New York Times. 

She’s completed residencies at Art Omi, Yaddo, and the Lower East Side Printshop and was a studio resident at the Elizabeth Foundation’s Studio program from 2011-17. Her paintings were featured in Landscape Painting Now, an anthology of contemporary paintings published by D.A.P and Thames & Hudson. In 2019 Noa was a recipient of a travel grant from Asylum Arts and a studio grant from FST Studio Projects Fund.

She lived and worked in Brooklyn, NY.

Thursday December 7th, 2023 - 5pm-6pm

In lieu of an artist’s talk, the York Gallery will celebrate Suzanne’s work and artistic legacy with a reception and panel discussion focused on the many kinds and varied purposes of residencies for professional artists. 

The panel will include a variety of contemporary working artists with a wide range of residency experiences to share as well as administrative staff from organizations and residencies near and far who will discuss how artists can learn about and successfully apply for residencies.

We’ll discuss sources of residency information as well as smart practices and rules of thumb for the creation of successful applications.

We want to give the York community, especially our fine and performing arts students, a solid overview of artist residencies.