Los Angeles, CA
ssimpson.la@gmail.com
ssimpsonwsimpson.com
Education
1999 California Institute of the Arts, Master of Fine Arts, Experimental Animation
1993 Brown University, Bachelor of Arts, Honors in Visual Art
Co-Artistic Director of Automata, an arts organization dedicated to the creation and presentation of puppet theater and related forms.
Grants and Awards
2017 Jim Henson Foundation Production Grant
2014 Center for Cultural Innovation Investing In Artists Grant
2012 Center for Cultural Innovation and Durfee Foundation Matching Funds Grant
2009 Jim Henson Foundation Project Grant
2008 Center for Cultural Innovation Investing In Artists Grant
2007 Multi-Arts Production Fund Grant
2001, 2005, 2007 Durfee Foundation Artist Completion Grant
2006 Creative Capital Grant
2003 The California Community Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship
2002 The Richard E. Sherwood Award
Performance
2019 Encounter the Unseen, UCLA Jan Popper Theather
An evening of Artist Actulized Lectures on Science and Technology
Live cinematic illustration the work of botanist Felipe Zapata in collaboration with muscician Heather Lockie
2018 A Machine for Living
Sci_Fi live cinema performance with puppets
Premiered in May 2018 for 2 week run at Automata in Los Angeles
Returned as Part of Live Arts Exchange Festival in October, 2018
2014 -15 Augustine September: Artist in Residence (a traveling performance installation)
Opening of New/Net, Ace Hotel, Los Angeles
Tongva After Dark: Wonder Room, Santa Monica 2014
Live Arts Exchange Festival, Los Angeles
Bright Light Night Festival, Rosemead
The Far East Plaza, Los Angeles (July-Nov 2014)
2014 The Last Act of Lilka Kadison, Falcon Theater, North Hollywood
Designed and constructed a toy theater cabinet and series of puppet vignettes for larger stage show.
2008-14 Concrete Folk Variations (Writer, Director, Designer)
Automata, Los Angeles, CA, May 2014
The Manual Archives, Los Angeles, CA, 2008-2009
Santa Monica Museum, Santa Monica, CA, July 2008
International Toy Theater Festival, Brooklyn, May, 2008
2010-12 Exhibit A ( Writer, Director, Designer)
NOW Festival, REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA (2012)
Forum for Contemporary Art, Santa Barbara, CA (2010)
Rio Hondo College, Whittier, CA (2010)
Links Hall, Banners and Cranks Festival, Chicago, IL (2010)
2010 Ineffable Sustenance (Director, Designer), Performance Installation
Let Them Eat LACMA, LA County Museum of Art
2010 Питер-Burg (Co-Director)
Theatre Pokoleniy, St Petersburg, Russia
2004-08 Frankenstein: Mortal Toys ( Co-director and Designer with Janie Geiser) adaptation by Erick Ehn
HERE Art Center, New York, NY (2008)
The Velaslavasay Panorama, Los Angeles CA (2006)
The Museum of Jurassic Technology, Culver City, CA (2004)
2007 Lead Feet and Nothing Upstairs a History of the Lifelike ( Director and Designer)
The Manual Archives, Los Angeles, CA
2005-07 Sunset Chronicles (Co-Director, Co-Designer and ensemble member)
Velaslavasay Panorama, Los Angeles, CA
Il Corral, Los Angeles, CA
Noah Purifoy Foundation, Joshua Tree, CA
2001 Pseudoflora (Director and Designer)
The Museum of Jurassic Technology, Culver City, CA
Visual Art
Solo Shows and Installations
2017 The Infinite Library, A public art commission for Crenshaw-Imperial Library, Inglewood, CA
A sculptural cabinet containing dioramas and peepshows exploring the expansiveness nature of libraries
2013 Interstitial Infinite , The Digital Mural Project, Culver Center for the Arts, UC Riverside,
A kinetic window installation generating live feed video for a jumbotron
2009 Dreamers, Thank You. Come Back Again: The Work of Susan Simpson
Exhibition at Sheehan Gallery, Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA
Group Shows
2009 The Future Imaginary , Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College, Los Angeles
Ongoing Homesick For the World, collaboration with writer Janet Sarbanes
Home and Garden, Viralnet Curatorial Project
Design Projects
2020 Silver Lake Library Pods, Designed unique pod shap little libraries for public parks in Silver Lake
2019 Reading Ours Gallery, Los Angeles , CA Designed and built architectural elements
2016 One Bus at a Time, Huntington Library and Gardens, San Marino, CA
Designed and fabricated of a multi-panel three dimensional map illustrated with children's drawings of the Huntington
Part of a campaign to raise funds to provide transportation for field trips to The Huntington.
2015 The Readers Chorus, at Automata in Los Angeles
Visual Designer (including costumes and musical scores)
2015 Mobile Display Cabinet, Huntington Library and Gardens, San Marino, CA
Designed and oversaw fabrication of 2 folding mobile display cases
2014 Augustine September: Artist in Residence, The Far East Plaza, Los Angeles
Designed and built a kiosk with puppet stages, display case and peepshows
Community Based Public Arts Projects
2012-13 Second Campus Photomural, Huntington Library and Gardens, San Marino, CA
Lead in the creation a 700ft photomural featuring 220 portraits of students from three East Los
Angeles schools, holding photos they had taken in their neighborhoods.
2014-15 Harmony Project, Huntington Library and Gardens, San Marino, CA
Lead students from two schools in the collaborative creation of multimedia
mosaics for exhibition for the opening of The Huntington's Education Center
Film
2008 Boll Weevil Days, Director/Designer
Rotterdam International Film Festival, 2005
Seattle International Film Festival, 2006
MadCat Film Festival 2006,
OutFest Los Angeles, 2006
Yerba Buena Center, SF, 2008
2016 Inconsolable Objects (Director and Designer) for The Los Angeles Peephole Cinema, June 2016-August 2017
A short, silent animated film about unrest at home
2017 ALARM (Director and Designer) for The Peephole Cinema at Ann Arbor Film Festival 2017
A short, silent animated film about quiet panic
Press
KCRW, May 6, 2014, Formally Excavating the Past, on Opening the Curtain by Anthony Byrnes
Hyperallergic, May 14, 2014 Hard-Boiled Wooden Puppets, Alicia Eler
L.A. Weekly Blog, April 25, 2013 Silver Lake's Gay Rights History...As Told by Puppets, by Anna Jones
LA Weekly Pick, 5 Artsy Things to do in LA, April 25, 2013 Rules for Radical Puppets
Stage and Cinema, August 1, 2012“Best Be On Your Avant-Garde”, Tony Frankel,
Flaunt, Issue 106, Fall 2010, "Radical Puppeteers: Susan Simpson, Janie Geiser and The Experimental Theater Art of Automata" Interview by Sylvia Sukop
The Los Angeles Times, May 17, 2009, “Puppet Masters are not Toying Around” by Holly Myers
L.A. Weekly, March 14, 2008, "Concrete Folk Variations: Death of a Sugar Daddy" by Amy Nicholson
New York Times, Jan 14, 2008, "Down Sized: Eerie Tale Of a Man and His Monster"
by Rachel Saltz
Los Angeles Times, Dec 15, 2007 “Expressive Puppetry Bring 'Frankenstein' to Life” by David Ng
L.A. Weekly, December 13, 2007 “Frankenstein (Mortal Toys): Small Wonder” by Holly Willis
Backstage West, June 13, 2007 "Lead Feet and Nothing Upstairs", by Jennie Web
Los Angeles Times, June 14, 2007, “Mythmaking for Adults” by Kathy Foley
Los Angeles Times, June 3, 2007, "Propagating Puppets" by Diane Haithman
American Theatre, February 2005, “Size Matters” by Melinda Barlow
Los Angeles Times, June 2005, “Thinking Really Small Pays Off” by Brenda Rees
Teaching
Selected courses taught at California Institute of the Arts over the past 15 years:
The Manual Mechanical - a practical course in constructing mechanical toys
Constructing Performing Objects - a practical course in constructing puppets
Decoys, Dolls and Dummies: Animated Objects in Contemporary Performance, Media and Visual Art
Objects High and Low: The History of Puppet Theater in the U.S.