Toru Sugita

Laurie Szujewska (shoe yév skä) is a printmaker, typographer, and graphic designer. She currently is making prints on a letterpress concerning shapes and color.  She once worked in the printing trades and lived and played in NYC with the band members of The Chairs while creating graphics for the performing arts venue Roulette during its early years. After completing her MFA in graphic design from the Yale School of Art she moved west to California and worked as a designer and art director at Adobe Systems where she created many awarding-winning graphics and the typeface Giddyup. Abandoning computers she now makes prints using obsolete technology and often teaches at Reed College and UC Davis.  Her prints and graphic work have been exhibited in various venues in Europe and the United States and are included in many Artist Book Collections at universities, libraries, and private collections.

In my early life I always painted. My parents let me paint huge murals on our walls and I did several murals for the community but did not think of it as a career. I went to San Francisco State University where I studied Dance, psychology and Science with a focused on the human body in movement. After three years in college I got a summer job as an actress in The Sound of Music. That lead to a few years exploring what life would be like as an actress. All the while I painted as a way to center myself and I had a few exhibitions of my paintings. By 24 I turned all of my attention to art making and moved to the art haven of Santa Fe New Mexico. It was there that my life as an artist was launched. My skills as a visual artist were honed with the help of that supportive art community. Working from my studio in Santa Fe I made paintings that were exhibited all over the US and Europe. In 1997 I moved to Seattle for 14 years. The landscape of the Pacific Nothrwest impressed called to me. Inspired by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai and his 36 views of Mount Fuji, I created 36 Views of Mount Rainier in the medium of Hokusai, wood block printing.The loss of my father to Leukemia and my mother to Alzheimer’s fundamentally changed my artistic direction. I had previously always expressed my self  by making images I turned my focus to writing a book. I worked through my grief as I wrote about my creavtive, loving and artistic family.The process helped me understand how they had always supported me and my development as an artist. After the book launch in 2016 I moved to Alexandria, Virginia and became a member of Printmakers Inc at the Torpedo Factory. As fortune would have it that I have found another wonderful supportive artistic community that has embraced me as I return to print making.