Susan Bee

Susan Bee (born January 14, 1952 ) is an American painter, editor, and book artist known for her work in book form and as co-editor and co-founder of M/E/A/N/I/N/G. She and her family visited Provincetown, Massachusetts during the summers, where she took art classes at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum and took sailing lessons as a teenager.

Career Bee has been painting since the 1970s, with her early work being abstract. and as "whimsically surrealist".

She has taught at the School of Visual Arts MFA in Art Criticism and Writing program and at the University of Pennsylvania and at Pratt Institute.

Her artwork is included in many public and private collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Getty Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, Yale University, Clark Art Institute, New York Public Library, and Harvard University Library.

Fellowships and grants She has had Fellowships at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in 2002 and 1999, Yaddo Fellowships in 2001 and 1996, and at the MacDowell Colony in 2012. In addition, she has had publication grants from the Visual Arts Program, the National Endowment for the Arts, from 1992 to 1997 and Publication Grants, from the Visual Arts Program, New York State Council on the Arts, from 1989 to 1997.

In 2014, Susan Bee was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship.

Exhibitions Susan Bee is currently represented by A.I.R. Gallery, where she has been a member since 1997.

She has had eleven solo shows at A.I.R. Gallery in New York.

In 2024, "Susan Bee, Eye of the Storm: Selected Works 1981-2023” was presented at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM). The show was curated by Johanna Drucker. A 68-page full-color catalog with essays by Drucker, John Yau, and Raphael Rubinstein was published by PAAM.

Solo exhibitions Criss Cross: New Paintings (2013), Accola Griefen Gallery Photograms and Altered Photos from the 1970s (2015), Southfirst Gallery, Brooklyn. Pow! New Paintings (March 16-April 16, 2017), A.I.R. Gallery

Artist's books Bee has published six artist's books with Granary Books. These include several collaborations with poets: Bed Hangings, with Susan Howe, A Girl’s Life, with Johanna Drucker, The Burning Babe and Other Poems with Jerome Rothenberg, and Log Rhythms and Little Orphan Anagram with Charles Bernstein. In addition, she has published nine artist's books for other publishers, including ' 'Off-World Fairy Tales' ' with Drucker (2020), Fabulas Feminae with Drucker (2015), Entre (2009) with poems by Regis Bonvicino, from Global Books, Paris, and The Invention Tree (2012) with poems by Jerome McGann, Chax Press.

Editing Bee is the co-editor, with Mira Schor, of M/E/A/N/I/N/G: An Anthology of Artist's Writings, Theory, and Criticism, with writings by over 100 artists, critics, and poets, published by Duke University Press in 2000. She was the co-editor of M/E/A/N/I/N/G: A Journal of Contemporary Art Issues from 1986 to 1996 and is currently the co-editor of M/E/A/N/I/N/G Online.

Personal life Susan Bee is married to poet Charles Bernstein,

Her parents, Jewish American artists Miriam Laufer and Sigmund Laufer, immigrated to the United States in 1947. She is the great-granddaughter of a Torah scribe.