Talking to Susan Tolbert on the phone, prior to meeting her at a local coffee shop, she described herself:

“People have said I look like Martha Stewart.” There’s a tinge of ironic sarcasm in her chuckle. Upon seeing her in person, and then talking about the state of art locally and regionally, and what that means economically–as well as war, Peta, and self-image–I can attest the only comparison to America’s Queen of Craft and Tolbert is the blonde hair.

She speaks with an easy elegance, not pretentious, but obviously well-educated. Quotes from playwrights, critics, and painters pepper her sentences. Items from daily life pepper her paintings, in which she tries to keep all the items represented on the canvas their actual size, and at the same time tries to make them appear as though they’re sliding down the surface.

She references trompe l’oeil (fool the eye) American artist John Frederick Peto. “It was this little genre of painters and they would tack things to a wall and they would paint them exact size, so you can’t tell what’s real…it looks so real it fools you. So I sort of played with that. I have a little rule in my painting. I paint everything the size it is. I would have much more leeway in the composition if I just made them fit, so this is a much harder thing.”

I tell her her work reminds me of collage—items from real life worked into a statement—in actual size, no less—only painted instead of glued or tacked. Turns out, she starts her pieces like they’re a collage to get the positioning right, and then paints her creation.

“I do like to play with collage, where I physically put them on a canvas and I stand on a ladder, then I have to run down and fit—just like in collage, in that you play and keep the pieces in play before you start nailing them down. I’ve come up with all sorts of techniques to move the pieces around more.

Tolbert started with this style around four years ago and it seems a successful undertaking. She just finished showing at Mary Washington University and has work at Virginia Beach’s Contemporary Art Center’s New Waves exhibit through March, though most often she shows out of the area.

I showed her a piece of hers I printed from the internet, which is 48×48 in real life. Though she challenges herself with larger pieces, she also makes many smaller paintings. “I went back and made smaller paintings because on the internet they look much better and then for shows—everything is on a CD and it’s the tyranny of the slide. Yet, when you see the real painting, that’s where you get the slipping down effect…So I’m trying to correct that. I wouldn’t trust an artist who thought their series was perfect or who didn’t have ideas on how they want to make it better..”

She was educated in Richmond, Norfolk, and Washington DC, and trained in realism. She moved back to Norfolk from DC when the challenges of balancing being a single working mom and an ambitious artist became taxing. I asked her what Norfolk brings the artistic table in comparison with her experiences in our neighboring urban areas.

“After living in DC, I can honestly say it brings nothing to the table.” She doesn’t say this out of menace, but rather out of wanting things to change.

She paraphrases The Flight of the Creative Class author Richard Florida’s take on Norfolk. “A lot of statistics, but basically he seemed to be saying you need creative jobs to have collectors, and if you don’t have collectors, there is no reason for artists to stay here. And I’ve always felt that was a big problem in Norfolk. I mean, when I lived I DC, collectors gave parties to show off their collections and you met all kinds of people. You could go out every night of the week. You had to fight against it.”

I told Tolbert AltDaily is encouraged by our local artists and like to make creative types in the area aware of each other. I gave my personal opinion: Because we’re a small city, being a big fish in a small pond is not necessarily a bad position to be in. The problem here is we have no pond, just a lot of little puddles scattered about.

“That’s it,” she says. “If there’s no pond to play in, there’s not the competition.” She feels artistic competition is what fuels bigger and better things from artists. “Competition is a good way to breed creativity.”

We discuss Peta’s marketing team leaving Norfolk for Los Angeles as an example of some of our creative population moving on… and the overall effects of losing an artistic society in a city.

“It leaves us a working class town,” she says. ‘We’re not a steel town or a Ford town. Certainly Richmond supported the arts—and advertising moved down from New York and Richmond has boomed. VCU has morphed into this huge number one art university and the city has worked with it. The Virginia Museum is getting ready to open in Richmond and we’re only two hours away. Why this tremendous difference? I always say it almost feels like a time warp.”

She told a story about playwright Horton Foote—who writes about a small Texas town but lives in New York City. In an interview, he was asked why he doesn’t live in the setting of his plays and he said “it’s a very lonely place when no one shares your passion—and I think that’s one of the problems for art here. Your work depends on the energy level you surround yourself with—an energy force, a social life where people are mixing. Artists becoming aware of each other [is important]. It’s important to network. The ‘if you build it, they will come’ philosophy regarding galleries doesn’t work.”

Tolbert’s artist’s statement says she wants to comment on current issues or places and capture a sense of the contemporary American landscape. She’s working on a series now with pieces including Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “I just find that…how could we have exploded the atom bomb? It nags at me. Something about being very anti-war, I just don’t understand the concept of killing people.”

The challenge in her art is to keep it from being what she calls a “history board.” “To me, I don’t want someone hitting me over the head with their interpretation. I like there to be room where someone can make up their own story.”

“Are there any current issues or events piquing your interest now?” I ask.

“Always. Always. I’ve been on EBay buying doll heads. Overpopulation is something we never talk about. We talk about global warming as if overpopulation were not a piece of it—and I guess it’s how do I put that together in a poetic manner? I’m appalled at our greed and waste—so you’ll see little images for gas and cars. As a society, we waste so much and we think it’s normal.”

Overpopulation in general… under-population of creative people in Hampton Roads… no, Susan Tolbert has nothing to worry about… she’s nothing like Martha Stewart—in a good way.

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