In Memory of Susan Stauber

I made this book to honor the memory of my college friend Susan Stauber, who passed away in 2024, and to document some of her artistic creations. 

This text tells of some of our adventures together, and how our after-college life interests led us down different paths which rarely crossed, but crossed just enough - or perhaps it was only the shared memories of our youth - but when Susan died we still considered each other friends.

I made the paper for the cover, wrote the text, printed it on paper similar to that of Susan's prints, and then bound the book as an accordion - using a curious structure I pieced together specifically for this project. There is only one copy.

 

The book can be seen by visiting the special collections department in UCSCs Mc Henry Library. The call number is Z239 .G66 2026 and can be found using this link A book of art work by Susan Beth Stauber. 

I took the photos in a grove of redwoods near the library, just before delivering the book. 

Here is the text of the book:

 

Susan Stauber came to Santa Cruz from Oceanside, CA in the fall of 1972 to attend UCSC, the University of California, then known to its students as Uncle Charlies Summer Camp. Because of her interest in the arts, Susan was put in College Five, and given a room on the second floor of the A dorm. The A dorm was unprogressively coed, with a “girls” hall to the right of a central living room space and a “boys” hall off to the left. Susan’s room was right in the middle, a converted closet off the living room, which made her the first “girl” most of the “boys” met, and she was always a part of the hi-jinks of those “first year away from home boys.”

 

I was one of those boys, in room A240, across the hall from Mitchell Omerberg, and down the hall from Steve Emery. As often happens with dorm/hall mates in college, the three of us became friends, and Susan was always there too. Susan and Steve were both art majors and filled the dorm with random acts of art. I can tell many stories about our escapades, but will not tell them here, except to mention one: Mitchell read a magazine article about hopping freight trains. The article mentioned potential dangers, including injuries from falling and muggings by hobos. It also stressed that hopping trains was illegal, and should never be done with a female companion. So, of course, Susan, Mitchell, and I decided we had to do it. We hitchhiked to Watsonville, then hopped a freight to Los Angeles for a weekend getaway. I am not sure how we got home, or what a story like that will tell you of who Susan was, but it is what you get.

 

What happened to us after college is, I guess, how after college works out for many people: the closeness of the first year in dorms, finding our ways together with, fun money-making schemes, followed by some transitional opportunity (for me the Renaissance Faire) that draws you away, somewhere else. I didn’t follow what happened to Mitchell or Susan. Steve ended up moving a block away from my brother-in-law, so I saw him occasionally over the years. I later learned Susan graduated as an art major and got a job working at local bookstores (both Bookshop Santa Cruz and Logos). Sometime around 1990 she moved to New York City, where she worked for Random House publishers. 

 

In college, Doug McClellan had been Susan’s favorite art teacher, a friend, mentor, and inspiration. After moving to New York, (and maybe before, but I had lost contact with her) every year she made a collage, clearly inspired by McClellan’s art work. In the early 1990s, before teaching a class at the New York Center for Book Arts, I gave lecture there and found Susan in the audience. I was embarrassed that I hadn’t even known she had moved to New York. But after that, pretty frequently, around New Years, I would receive a copy of her collage for the year, printed as an edition, for distribution to friends. These collages are witty commentaries on beauty & pointlessness, bordered & structured, initially seeming to present a world with a sense of order, but her inclusion of purposeless devices and machinery speak otherwise, of a different world. 

 

In 2025 I saw a Facebook post by Steve Emory, showing quilts he was making from scraps of cloth that had belonged to Susan. That is when I learned Susan had passed away on November 3, 2024. Hearing that, I pulled out what I had from her, my collection of her collages. I decided to create something with them, a book to honor our past friendship. To be a meaningful book it needed more than just her collages, so I set out to compose a text to let the reader know who Susan was. 

 

Besides creating her collages and other artwork, Susan was a skilled quilter, seamstress, and knitter. Her quilts were exhibited regularly, and she attended international quilting conventions. At one convention in Japan, she began collecting vintage traditional kimonos. Before she died she placed over one hundred kimonos in a collection in California.

 

Susan also collected service desk bells. When she died she had over 200 of these chime bells in her home, which her executors distributed to friends and acquaintances.

 

She loved gardening and walking around New York City. Among her many fine qualities was helping people in quiet ways. For example, she paid tuition and book fees for an acquaintance so they could complete their education. 

 

Susan’s obituary ended the same way this book will: Please consider performing a random act of kindness, planting a garden, and reading a good book, in memory of Susan, even if you didn’t know her.