Sharp's art goal: happiness

Apr. 16—Salvation Army 360 Life Center director and contemporary abstract artist Susan Sharp desires simply to make people feel happier.

"One of the reasons I got hired at Salvation Army was because of my arts background. They thought maybe an arts emphasis would be good here," the former Galesburg, Illinois, theater and public speaking teacher says. "It hasn't really materialized. I think the day-to-day needs of people have become bigger."

For example, in February Sharp was called during the night to Ninth Avenue South while Clinton firefighters fought the flames of a house fire that displaced two adults and two children.

"The kids that came out of the house, one of them didn't even have shoes on," she said.

Sharp provided socks that she had happened to have in her car at the time, helped to secure lodging for the family in a hotel, and brought food from Information, Referral and Assistance Service for them the next morning, all before the Red Cross out of Dubuque responded to the scene.

"You can imagine the people that come to my window," Sharp said, referring to her Salvation Army office door. "I'm their last hope."

In her office there on First Avenue, pieces of her own art hang on the walls, colorful and reflective of her optimistic personality that Sharp says she's had "since day one."

More visibly to the public, her art shows on three exterior walls of the Salvation Army's previous location on Seventh Avenue South and the formerly red wall that borders the steps to the South Third Street entrance of the building that used to be the YMCA, done with a 2023 River Bluff Community Foundation grant of $2,500 to clean up some of Clinton's graffiti.

With the grant, Sharp also covered areas of a building for sale on Second Street next to 392 Caffe and, she said, "a lot of random graffiti in a lot of alleys."

The train car that sits next to the Clinton County Historical Society Museum on South First Street was graffitied last fall. Sharp says that she plans to take on the project of painting over it during the upcoming spring and summer seasons and hopes that volunteers will come to join her.

The artwork that Sharp usually creates is done with the intent for them to occupy the walls of large corporations, hotel lobbies, hospital waiting rooms, "anywhere that you can uplift people and make them think," she said.

Sharp recalls the times that she has spent in waiting rooms, herself, and the nervousness and need of a distraction that would have been welcomed during both of her parents' battles with cancer.

After 19 years spent in Galesburg in 2019 she decided to stop teaching. Sharp felt burnt out, she said, and needed a change. Her decision coincided with her father's illness and subsequent death, so Sharp in August of last year returned to Camanche where she had grown up.

The Speak Out Against Suicide organization in Camanche has since received pieces of her art that Sharp donated to their annual fundraising gala. She has donated others to causes dedicated to fighting cancer and a wildlife relief, charities where appreciation could be found for the message that Sharp seeks to send with her work.

"For me, it's about color and texture and movement," she said, depicted often in circular shapes. "I think that's symbolic of the idea that I think we're constantly growing and reinventing ourselves."

She works with various types of media, incorporating abaca paper made of trees in Mexico into one artwork and making another with brightly-colored maps of the 1960s she'd found.

"I started a series a few years ago when I asked a billboard company if they would give me some discarded billboard," Sharp said.

She painted over its text and graphics, cut it into strips, then wove them together.

It was out of this series that a purchased piece appeared in a scene in the seventh season of the Netflix drama "Orange is the New Black."

Sharp had first become an artist in 2000 after searching for a piece of art to give to friends as a gift for their new house.

"I was shocked at the prices," she said. "I said to myself, not knowing anything about art at the time, I think I could do that."

Sharp didn't start making art for commercial purposes until 2003, selling her earliest works at a downtown store for $30 or $40 each.

Now, her works are available through different online stores which offer her customers different products and price points.

"I think more than ever, art is important to society," Sharp said. "If it was just about money, maybe I'd charge a lot more, but for me, it's about health and wellness and spirituality, and I want art to make people's day better."

Sharp's art is available online for purchase at the following web addresses: susandsharp.com, susandsharp.etsy.com, asharpdifference.com, pinoodles.etsy.com, and society6.com/susandsharp