Artist
Susan Joy Rippberger
Community Art & Art Education
Susan Joy Rippberger
Themes:
Care and Relational Practice, World-building & Imagined Futures, Ceramics, Language, Community & Belonging
Meet Susan Joy Rippberger,
Susan’s creative work explores care, world-building, weaving, and organic structures across various media.
As an arts educator, she has led hands-on workshops in printmaking, poetry, and installation for learners of all ages and abilities.
Her community-based projects include a free workshop funded by New York City to help bring art back into public spaces after the pandemic, where families speaking English, Spanish, and Arabic created poetry and stencil art in a city park.
The project, Entonando un Nuevo Mundo (Dreaming a New World), led to a related stencil tapestry (Entonar) exhibited in a New York City gallery.
She currently works in ceramics and experimental glazes.
She now lives in Scotland and travels occasionally to France and Italy, where she continues to engage with local languages as part of her practice and daily life.
Education
Susan Rippberger holds a PhD in International and Comparative Systems of Education, based on field research in the Mayan (Tzotzil-speaking) region of Mexico, and an MSc in Art Psychotherapy with a specialization in nature-based art therapy.
Biography
Susan Rippberger began her career as a public school teacher in the United States, working with Spanish-speaking children of migrant workers from Mexico. She taught all subjects in both English and Spanish before moving into university teaching and research on the U.S.–Mexico border. At the University of Texas at El Paso and in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, she taught and conducted qualitative research on bilingualism.
Her doctoral fieldwork was carried out in the Mayan (Tzotzil-speaking) highlands of Mexico, where she conducted interviews with families accompanied by her bilingual daughter, who conversed with the children in their shared second language, Spanish. Susan’s most recent academic qualification is an MSc in Art Psychotherapy, specialising in nature-based therapeutic practice.
Awards
Susan created and exhibited a stencil tapestry titled Entonar, produced as part of the community project Entonando un Nuevo Mundo (Dreaming a New World), which was shown in a gallery in New York City.
Professional language Experience
Susan’s travel and language experience began shortly after high school, when she spent a month living with a family in northern Mexico while studying Spanish at a local college. She has since travelled regularly throughout Mexico for study, research, and academic presentations. Her professional teaching career spans public schools, universities, and community art programmes across the U.S. and Mexico.
