Helen Suter's artwork has been exhibited internationally in more than 80 museums, galleries, and non-art venues like railroad stations, libraries, nursing homes and former factories. It has been mentioned and reviewed in numerous publications, including The New York Times and, locally, in Metroland. The work is represented in private and public collections.

Helen teaches clay sculpture, mosaics, block printing, chasing copper bowls and building stained glass panels in the middle and high school levels at Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School in Ghent, New York. Recently, she taught a successful stained glass mosaic course at a historic local summer camp which draws campers from all over the world. 

She works as a docent at Jack Shainman’s gallery “The School” in Kinderhook, NY, where she also creates popular floral arrangements (see Instagram). Working as an independent interpretive guide, she has presented educational tours at Fredrick Edwin Church’s Olana, a New York State Historic Site.

Other interests have included theater set design and designing renovations of a townhouse, an 1800 farmhouse and barn, as well as a mid-century raised ranch. She considers the conceptual development, and aesthetic, of her websites a creative endeavor similar to designing the book she published accompanying her MFA thesis artwork. Her jewelry line can be purchased from her online shop and in several Hudson Valley boutiques. 

Born in Bern, Switzerland, Helen Suter was raised in Peru, Switzerland and South Africa. After attending Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town, where she earned an Advanced Diploma and MFA in sculpture summa cum laude, she re-located to New York City. While working for fashion designer Bettina Riedel, she started her own belt business. This led to opening her first art studios, including a metal workshop, in Hoboken, New Jersey and, later, in the East Village in NYC. In 2001, she moved her family to a farm in the rural Hudson Valley where she raised her two sons. She currently lives in Tivoli, NY. 

'' ...wit and warmth—characteristics that Suter’s work positively effuses. Her pieces... are lyrical combinations of found objects and simple materials, carefully organized and presented in a lightly ponderous manner. If that sounds self-contradictory, so is the work—in a very successful way... Simply put, Suter is a marvel ''

David Brickman

Metroland, April 29, 2004

Canned Future

Artist Statement

Expressing the movement of invisible, subtle energy through stationary, sculptural works has been my enduring interest over many years of working as a visual artist. 

To accomplish this, I began by creating sculptural analogies in large-scale steel and mixed media constructions, drawing mainly from the designs of electrical and magnetic functional systems. The resulting sculptural systems appeared to transmit energy. A viewer, to my surprise, described my later works as “spiritual antennas”!

There has been a delicate shift in my artistic work. The transformation is in the use of materials and forms. Pieces are curved in shape, light- weight and free of density. Some move in space in response to flowing currents of air (“Venus Landing, after Botticelli” and “Prima...Primavera”). In performance installation pieces the work is shaped by the viewer's direct interaction, the cutting of the material. Perhaps these changes in my artworks are a response to the similar, shifting sensations of subtle motion in my body as cultivated by more than a decade of somatic movement practice.

Discover more creative work by Helen Suter here:

Hawthorne Valley Student Work    |    Helen Suter Jewelry   |   Instagram    |   Watermark Arts   |   Continuum Movement Arts

Photography Credits:

Prue Jeffries, Mattjis Vormer,  Kasimir Suter Winter, Sarah Sterling,  Barry Butterfield,  Harvey Weiss,  Jac de Villiers,  Andrew Meintjies, Helen Suter.