Susan Byrnes
Community Voices ProducerSusan Byrnes was first on the radio at the age of seven, reading her poem on WRNY in Rome, NY, her hometown. At the time she was a precocious poet, but she switched to visual art, and later earned a BFA in photography and an MFA in sculpture.
Somewhere in between her studies she was an executive director of a modern dance company and had the opportunity to witness up close the work of world class contemporary artists, such as Bill T. Jones, Liz Lerman, and Trisha Brown. In her own artwork she began to consider ideas of performance, participatory art and sound art, influenced by the conceptual work of these artists. In 2004, she produced and hosted her first radio show as a conceptual artwork. Called “Ghost Lover”, it aired weekly on WALF at Alfred University, Alfred, NY from midnight to 2 am, and featured the songs and stories from musical and visual artists who had died tragic or romantic deaths, as artists sometimes do. The next year she created the show “Super Sonic Transmissions”, dedicated to broadcasting experimental audio art compositions.
She first heard WYSO when she was in town interviewing for a job at the University of Dayton. It might have been the show “Excursions” and it could have been a song by the Ramones, her memory there is fuzzy, but even if it wasn’t, what she heard influenced her decision to relocate to the Miami Valley. She said, and I quote, “Life is too short to live in a place without good radio.” In Dayton she continued to participate in broadcasting, and during most of her seven-year tenure as Director of UD’s ArtStreet, Susan hosted a weekly show on the campus station WUDR called “Radio ArtStreet” which featured music, interviews with campus guest artists, and an area arts events calendar.
When Neenah Ellis started the Community Voices program, Susan applied and was accepted to the inaugural class. It changed her life and she has continued producing radio stories, primarily about artists and artmaking practices. Her stories have been broadcast on WYSO, (the former) WNKU, WKSU, and on 51% from WAMC in Albany, NY.
Susan works as visual artist, arts writer, teaching artist, and audio producer. She lives in Cincinnati now but loves, misses, and often visits the Miami Valley. You can find her visual and audio works on her website www.susanbstudio.com.
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If you’re a gardener, you might be cursing your heavy clay soil right about now. But clay is an important part of our region’s artistic legacy. Join Culture Couch producer Susan Byrnes as she unearths some history about pottery made in Zanesville and Cincinnati. -
“Walk This Way” is an exhibit at the Taft Museum in Cincinnati. It displays over 100 pairs of women’s shoes collected by high-fashion shoe designer Stuart Weitzman. Culture Couch producer Susan Byrnes takes us on a stroll through the show.
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We’re in the shortest days of the year. Twilight begins just after 5pm, and by 6 it’s dark. Throughout December, we experience only about 9 hours of daylight. Join Culture Couch producer Susan Byrnes as she explores the impact of light on two visual artists.
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After 55 years, Mendelsons Liquidation Outlet will be closed for good. In this segment Culture Couch producer Susan Byrnes brings us voices of Dayton artists who found materials and inspiration there.
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In a new exhibit at the Dayton Art Institute called “Archiving Eden”, photographer Dornith Doherty turns her lens to the critical issue of seed saving, and global efforts to conserve the world’s food sources.
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Artist Hank Willis Thomas’ first major retrospective, “All Things Being Equal” is open at the Cincinnati Art Museum. It was planned long before the pandemic hit and the country marched in protest of the murder of George Floyd. Now Thomas’s work, which addresses the ongoing struggle for liberty and equality that African Americans face, communicates with even greater urgency.
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Artist and Culture Couch Producer Susan Byrnes checks in with Rodney Veal, host of the Art Show on Dayton’s Think TV, who’s found that since the pandemic hit, the act of walking itself has, for him, taken on new meaning.
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Artist and Culture Couch producer Susan Byrnes works out of a studio in an old garage behind her house in Cincinnati. During the pandemic lockdown, her studio started feeling a little claustrophobic, so she began taking walks to find new sources of inspiration. Today, Susan shares some of what she found along the way.
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Social distancing is here the foreseeable future. But for people who are blind, contact with others can be essential for many daily life tasks. Community…
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In the late 1980’s, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe’s exhibition “The Perfect Moment” fueled the fire of the so-called “Culture Wars” that pitted…
