Past Exhibits
Suzan Mayer
"An Experimental Life"
April 6th - May 26th, 2008
Suzan Mayer was born Susan Jean Butler in Portland, Oregon in 1938. She went to Lincoln High School in SW Portland and won the second national prize in the Scholastic Magazine Art Contest in her senior year. She went to Reed College and the Museum Art School’s joint program, graduating with a B.A. in 1962 and a Certificate of Graduation from the Museum Art School.
She obtained a Secondary School (art) Teaching Certificate from Portland State University in 1964 and a Master’s in Social Work in 1972.
Suzan worked at Fruit and Flower Day Nursery as an assistant to the director from 1963. This was while her daughter was a student. After Andrea started grade school in 1966, Suzan started working as a caseworker at the old Multnomah County Welfare office. She was encouraged by personnel at Welfare to go to the Graduate School of Social Work at Portland State University, graduating in 1972.
She worked as a social worker in the Social Services Department of the Oregon Health Sciences University, mainly in Outpatient Adult Psychiatry and Medical Psychology Clinics. She volunteered in the Young Adults Group and the International Psychiatry Clinic in Outpatient Psychiatry.
In all, she worked for the State of Oregon 20 and a half years before going into private practice and training as a state certified Mental Health Examiner for civil commitment hearings in the Oregon State Circuit Court System.
Suzan has done arts and crafts all her life and has shown through Oregon Women's Caucus for the Arts, Oregon Women's Wand Collective, White Bird in Cannon Beach and in Portland at the Greystone Gallery, In Her Image, the Attic Gallery, Northwest Artists Workshop and the Rental Sales Gallery at the Oregon Art Institute/Portland Art Museum.
She has also shown at Cedar Mountain Drums, Old Wives' Tales Restaurant, and the Café Espresso.
