Featured image: On the Day You Were Born, The Sun Flared, Det, 2019, mixed media, 41 x 67 in. / 104.14 x 170.18 cm.
Susie Monday transforms textile collage into a powerful storytelling medium that weaves together personal reflection, collective memory, and symbolic imagery.Â
Susie Monday creates contemporary textile collages that combine fabric, stitching, and symbolism to explore memory, resilience, identity, and the human experience.
Through vibrant fabrics, stitched surfaces, and richly layered compositions, her works blur the boundaries between quilting, painting, and contemporary mixed media. In Guardian of Self Worth, This City Never Sleeps, and What is Gained and What is Lost, Monday explores themes of resilience, community, and transformation, using textiles not only as material but as a language of history, emotion, and lived experience. Together, these works reveal how fiber art can preserve memory while offering new ways to understand identity, change, and hope.
Guardian of Self Worth, Susie Monday, 2025, textile collage, 58 x 48 in. / 147.32 x 121.92 cm.
Guardian of Self Worth explores the emotional resilience required to sustain a creative life. At the center of the composition, organic forms branch outward into protective arms that surround a radiant heart-like core, symbolizing the artist's inner strength amid vulnerability. Rich greens, vibrant pinks, and glowing yellows create an atmosphere of vitality, while layered textiles, embroidery, and patterned fabrics give the work extraordinary tactile depth. Drawing on the symbolism of the Victim archetype, Monday transforms feelings of self-doubt into an image of protection, renewal, and self-compassion. The result is both intensely personal and universally relatable, celebrating the courage required to continue creating despite uncertainty.
This City Never Sleeps, Susie Monday, 2020, textile collage, 37 x 54 in. / 93.98 x 137.16 cm.
In This City Never Sleeps, Monday captures the restless spirit of New York City during the quiet isolation of the COVID-19 lockdown. Constructed from stitched daily fabric patches created throughout the pandemic, the composition resembles a vibrant urban mosaic where fragmented colors, printed textiles, and geometric forms echo illuminated windows, city blocks, and overlapping voices. Despite the absence of crowds, the artwork radiates movement and energy, suggesting that creativity and human connection persist even during moments of physical separation. The layered collage reflects both the disruption and resilience of urban life, transforming individual moments of stitching into a larger portrait of collective endurance.
What is Gained and What is Lost, Susie Monday, 2014, textile, 60 x 68 in. / 152.4 x 172.72 cm.
What is Gained and What is Lost presents a dreamlike landscape populated by symbolic birds, fruit, foliage, and celestial forms that invite contemplation of life's continual cycles of change. Bold reds, deep blues, lush greens, and patterned fabrics create a rich visual rhythm that balances decorative beauty with conceptual depth. Organic shapes flow seamlessly across the textile surface, encouraging viewers to move through the composition as though navigating a symbolic garden. The recurring imagery suggests abundance, transformation, and renewal while quietly acknowledging the sacrifices that accompany growth. Through layered fabrics and carefully orchestrated color relationships, Monday creates a work that reflects both celebration and reflection, emphasizing that every beginning is inseparable from an ending.
Across Guardian of Self Worth, This City Never Sleeps, and What is Gained and What is Lost, Susie Monday demonstrates the remarkable expressive potential of contemporary textile collage. Her richly layered works intertwine personal experience, cultural memory, and symbolic storytelling through fabric, color, and stitch. Whether exploring artistic resilience, communal perseverance, or the cycles of transformation, Monday invites viewers to experience textiles as vehicles for emotional reflection and visual poetry. Together, these works affirm the enduring ability of fiber art to communicate stories that are both deeply personal and profoundly universal.
Eating Tomatoes with Neruda, Susie Monday, 2022, textile collage, 35 x 40 in. / 88.9 x 101.6 cm.