Susan Haskell

Student

“The pleasure of creating is so important and so satisfying to me that it doesn’t matter what other people think of the product.”

As a graduate student at UCLA, Susan Haskell used to go to the glassblowing furnace and watch the students at their work. “I was too intimidated to sign up for the class,” Susan remembers. “There were all these big macho guys and I was not confident enough of my artistic abilities.”

Many things have since changed in Susan’s art life. She’s become an accomplished painter who sells more than half of her work and a skilled artisan in the delicate field of glassblowing. “When I came to SMC, I took all the classes I never took at UCLA,” Susan says. And one of them was Don Hartman’s glassblowing class.

“I’ve always loved glass. It’s a wonderful medium. But it’s physically demanding because of the intense heat,” says Susan. “And then there is a certain amount of upper body strength and balance that are needed as well.” But if she can’t handle the physical execution of one of her ideas, she says, she co-operates with her fellow students.

“I love SMC. I think I’ve had better classes here—especially in the Art Department—than I ever had at UCLA,” says Susan, who holds a Master’s in pictorial arts and textile design. “And the teachers are more stimulating and more interested in the students,” she adds.

Now teaching elementary school art, Susan is also a member of the Glass Club at SMC and helps coordinate the annual Christmas sale and organize the glass artist speaker’s program.

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