We celebrate 25 years of McColl Center by celebrating the artists who have been in residence since we opened our studio doors in 1999. McColl Center's artist residency program has provided space, resources, and community to nearly 500 contemporary artists from around the world and around the block. Today, we feature Susan Harbage Page, an Artist-in-Residence at McColl Center in 2004.
Susan Harbage Page is a storyteller. She exposes history for the way it categorizes and generalizes, for its stereotypes and self-fulfilling prophecies.
Working in mediums from photography and performance to painting and sculpture, Harbage Page pulls back the curtains on interpersonal relationships, unveiling the positives and negatives and the space in between where they intermingle and clash. “[I'm] interested in relationships and how they impact us, and how they are written on our bodies, and how our body becomes a diary or a scroll.”
Harbage Page began her 2004 residency at McColl Center at a pivotal time in her life. After surviving breast cancer in 2000, she was inspired to work with women undergoing cancer treatment. Together, the women journaled and took each other’s photos. Harbage Page then wove those words and images into Lives in Flux, a tapestry displayed at Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute (then called Carolinas Medical Center). Still on view, the piece serves as a good luck charm for people undergoing treatment to brush their fingers across on their way to their checkup.
Lives in Flux Tapestry, 3’x6’, 2004
Harbage Page has spent her life traveling and learning of culture and gender roles throughout the world, particularly exploring subcultures within which women adhere to strict work roles. She became interested in textiles, a trade historically considered women’s labor, and began experimenting with found embroidery. In these pieces she would painstakingly pull each handmade stitch out, as if to undo the history of women being stifled into strict roles.
“It became violent and hard pretty quickly,” Harbage Page admits. However, when looked at closely, even when each stitch was completely removed, the needle holes still illustrated the original image. “You can try to erase history,” she says, “you can try to change history, but it’s still there.” Upon this realization, she began to explore the ways women continue to willingly fulfill prophecies of what they can or cannot be or do.
Susan on-site installation performance for International Biennale Arte Dolomite.
Migrant’s Lament: Sewing Politics into Geography, 2016, Ex Casserma Monte Rita
Harbage Page incorporated these ideas into her curriculum at UNC-Chapel Hill, where she was an Associate Professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies. She lives in Spello, Italy, where she continues her artistic practice.
Despite her extensive list of residencies, she claims none other can compare to McColl Center’s residency program. “[A residency program that] pays that close attention to your work and helps you grow in that way at a pivotal time in your life makes a big difference,” she says. “It was just so good, and it was such a right time for me, and the facilities were so amazing. Everybody was so helpful.”
Harbage Page reveals that the biggest impact of McColl Center’s residency program are the connections that continue to this day. “I think it’s the community of artists that you learn from –you work together, you look at their work, and it's that place of discourse and discussion. It's those continued relationships, I think that they're the most important thing.”
Learn more about Susan Harbage Page and view her work.
Susan Harbage Page Installation