There’s a very specific kind of feeling that happens when you see your work on a museum wall.
There is pride and disbelief, but also this feeling of standing shoulder to shoulder with the never-ending trove of artists living in the Greek amphitheater of my mind.
It’s more like your past self taps you on the shoulder and says,
“We are one of many. What a good many to be a part of.”
I moved to San Diego when I was 19.
I didn’t have a master plan to become an artist.
I just knew I loved photographs—how they could hold proof of a moment.
I didn’t think art would be part of my career, but I knew, like I knew my own name,
“I love photography and photography loves me.”
So I started taking classes at Mesa College.
I learned how to see.
How to wait.
How to edit—not just images, but decisions.
One of my teachers was Patrizio A. Chavez, who is now one of the jurors of this exhibition. At the time, I was just a student trying to figure out how to make something that felt like me.
I didn’t know then that decades later, I’d be showing work in a museum exhibition he helped shape.
From Mesa, I continued to City College, and then to Grossmont College—devouring every photography course I could.
That’s where I studied with Suda House.
Suda didn’t just teach photography—she saw her students.
She wrote my scholarship recommendation to the San Francisco Art Institute, which helped open a door that changed the trajectory of my life.
And she’s still part of my creative life now. I still take classes with her.
Recently, she came to a Medium Photo Festival photo walk—just to say hi, to support, to cheer us on.
That kind of continuity… it stays with you.
Here is young me and some of my work. =)
And in another full-circle moment, I was honored with the Golden Ticket from the Hyde Gallery at Grossmont College as part of the Medium Photo Festival.
To be recognized by a space connected to the very place where I was shaped as a student—it felt like the timeline folding in on itself in the best possible way.
Art school expanded everything. It gave me language for what I was already intuitively drawn to—story, symbolism, emotion, the strange and beautiful ways we process our lives through images.
And then… life happened.
I built a dream business.
I photographed weddings, events, campaigns.
I traveled.
I told other people’s stories.
Since 2002, Shewanders Photography (based in San Diego) has been my way of staying inside this medium while also making a living. It taught me how to show up, how to deliver, how to connect.But there was always another layer running underneath—
the part of me that wanted to build worlds.
In 2025, I showed my project Welcome Home, Swamp Carpet at Spring/Break in New York.
It was messy and personal and strange in exactly the way I needed it to be. A revenge piece. A healing piece.
Every artist wants to show their work in New York City, and with Cincinnati Underground, I had my week in the sun.
But it was far from home.
A few weeks ago, I had two pieces selected for Where We Stand, Medium Photo’s juried exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.In my city.
The place I moved to at 19.
The place that shaped me.
The place where I learned how to see—now surrounded by my friends and family.
Standing in the gallery, looking at my work on the wall, I had this sunbeam-filled realization:
This didn’t happen all at once.
This is the result of:
community college classrooms
teachers who cared
years of showing up
experiments that didn’t work
projects that did
a city that continues to invest in artists over time
Support from organizations like the Prebys Foundation helps make ecosystems like this possible—not just for emerging artists, but for those of us who have been building, evolving, and circling back for decades.
What I love most about this moment is that it isn’t an ending.
It’s a continuation.
A reminder that the path of an artist isn’t linear—it loops. It deepens. It reconnects you to earlier versions of yourself in ways you couldn’t have planned.
And sometimes, if you’re lucky, it brings you back home,
just in time to see your work on the wall.
Many thanks to everyone at the Medium Photo Festival 2026,
the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Jurors Alessandra and Patrizio,
Suda House, the Hyde Gallery at Grossmont College, and the Prebys Foundation.
xoxo Suzanne
One of my new favorite emails =)
Dear Suzanne,
Congratulations! We are thrilled to inform you that your work has been selected for "Where We Stand," Medium Photo's juried photography exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) in La Jolla.
Plenty of artists have shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla and I love seeing them, but this time I was one of them. yay!