SUSANNE SWIBOLD
Artist | Elder

Susanne Swibold is an artist, explorer, teacher and naturalist. She has collaborated with renowned paleontologists, choreographers and biologists. As a child growing up near Detroit, Susanne saw the lions outside the Chicago Art Institute and determined that was where she would study and learn to be an artist. She earned a B.F.A. there (and from the University of Chicago) and a M.F.A. from the University of Michigan. 

As a practicing artist, photographer and film-maker, Susanne has travelled the world, often living on wild, remote islands for long periods of time.  Her life was forever changed by the weeks she spent camping on the Galapagos Islands in the early 1970s, before they became a wildlife mecca. Later, she spent decades with the Unangan (Aleut) people of the Pribilof Islands in Alaska and Commander Islands in Russia. Susanne was adopted into extended families and schooled by Aleut matriarchs. She produced four documentary films about the Pribilofs and began a 40-year association with indigenous spiritual leader Illarion (Kuuyux) Merculieff. Today, Susanne is a revered elder with the Wisdom Weavers of the World, and teaches art from her home in Canmore, Alberta. 

Susanne Swibold

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