Meet Suzanna Missenberger | Multi-Disciplinary Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Suzanna Missenberger and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Suzanna, have there been any changes in how you think about work-life balance?
I used to find myself really hung up on how best to achieve balance through discipline, and what I thought was consistency, and those things really do help. However what I have found most essential in establishing balance for myself is honesty. I have to be honest about where I am in life, what I need from myself, and what is most realistic and compassionate. What balance will look like for me January to March, will look completely different from what that would look like in December.

The times when I have experienced balance on a holistic level, it necessitated that I make some long or short term sacrifice. Whether that be replacing drinking, eating meat and large social events with things like walking in the morning, staying off social media, and adding more physical activities to my routine. I’m finding that the most important work I can do is to ground myself enough to be able to access a true sense of balance amidst life’s changes, and definitely my own changes.

Balance for me is a meeting ground about what I need from my life right now and what my life might need from me, and definitely always an understanding that this will change at some point.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I’ve had the opportunity and drive to explore so many different forms of visual art throughout my life. I’m also forever grateful for how my mother facilitated that throughout my childhood. I would’ve started doing murals and street art when I was around 15 years old in Kingston, Jamaica.

I’m now at an interesting point in my career where I can see where all this application, practice and patience has brought me to a place where I can truly say I am proud of and excited about the work that I am doing. My primary focus has been woodwork, making masks, and directing masquerades and photo projects around the intersection of identity and ecology. I can say I’m most happy about how personal, and simultaneously, larger than me this practice feels.

The masks right now open conversations around our identity, our inheritance, and displacement and how our natural environment, human and non-human ancestors can address the shifts and breaks in our reality, in every sense of the word. It’s first and foremost a project about restoration.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Jamaica is such a beautiful island, and there are truly so many different sides to immerse yourself in while you’re there. If visiting you just have to take yourself across at least a few different parishes. I’d start on the north coast, getting yourself a seat at ‘Stush in the Bush’ St. Ann, spending your days by ‘The Cove’, ‘Blue Hole’ and exploring to find your own little nooks and crannies. My home parish St. Mary, you’d definitely have to take trip out to Robins Bay, ‘Strawberry Fields’, take a stop at the family owned and operated ‘Soap Factory by the Sea’ to get your own custom batches of natural soaps. As well as visiting ‘Fanso’s Fish Spot’ by the cliffs, absolutely delicious. If you’re in Kingston you’d have to take yourself to a few street dances ‘Uptown Mondays’, ‘Dolly Sundays’ or any of the daily dances that happen all year round.
Finally I’d say a must do is having coffee in Irish town at any of the lovely cafe’s along the way to the Hollywell, and if you’re really adventurous a hike to the highest peak on the island.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Absolutely!

I’m so grateful and inspired by the support I’ve received at this stage in my career, it’s always more than I would’ve imagined.

Shout out to my friend, and one of my very first mentors, Richard Nattoo, an incredible Visual Artists, as well as my woodwork mentor Steve Smith, Fine Artist and Carpenter.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_movingspirit/

Image Credits
Scott Braque Destinee Condinson