Winter 2005

Sue Sommers: Prairie Ephiphany

By Lori Rotenberk
Photo of Sue Sommers at Somme Prairie Grove by Pat Wadecki

Watercolors, journals, prairie shrines, and prairie plants cut from wood and aluminum are but a few of the ways Sue Sommers makes art from Chicago Wilderness. As a longtime visual artist and teacher, Sommers has always worked from nature. But her absolute love of the prairie came in an epiphany a decade ago, when she went to the Nachusa Grasslands in Dixon, Illinois, with her husband, Tor Faegre, who had become involved in local conservation.

Prairie painting, by Sue Sommers

"He would go out to prairies every Sunday, and I wondered what it was he saw in the dull, flat Midwestern landscape," recalls Sommers, who grew up in Highland Park, Illinois, but had spent years in Boston after studying art history in California. "I was accustomed to the rolling beauty of the East and West Coasts, and I couldn't imagine that there could be anything here to match those places. So I tagged along."

That visit altered her life. "It was a beautiful June day. I looked out before me to see 3,000 purple prairie clover in bloom, and I wept," Sommers recalls. "It was then that I realized, 'This is the prairie. This is where I'm from.' It was one of those ah ha! moments for me, and I fell in love. And once you fall in love with something, you begin to invest in it."

Sommers soon had a new appreciation for the smaller prairies closer to her Evanston, Illinois, home. She has since spent many hours painting at Somme Prairie Grove in Northbrook. "Painting a prairie is hard — it's like weaving," she says. Prairie dock, golden Alexanders, goldenrod, and prairie grasses are now recurrent elements in her work. To ensure that the plants she loves are always near, Sommers has planted a thriving prairie garden in her back yard.

Glorious September, by Sue Sommers

Sommers is also an author and has served as an artist-in-residence in Chicago's inner-city schools. Her newest project includes bird-nest and prairie shrines and will be part of an exhibit at the Dittmar Memorial Gallery at Northwestern University in May. For more information, call (847) 491-2348.