Susan Grabel

Susan Grabel (born 1942, Brooklyn, NY) is an American feminist artist.^[1] She was married to the noted American History Professor George Rappaport,^[2] and has two children Matthew Rappaport and Jvala Moonfire. She is the cousin of Dr. Charles Kelman, inventor of phacoemulsification.

In 1961 Grabel attended a summer session at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and studied sculpture. "I spent day and night in the studio, and that was it!" When she returned to New York, she completed undergraduate studies at Brooklyn College in 1963. In 1964 Grabel finished studying sculpture at the Brooklyn Museum Art School where she had studied with Joe Konzal, Tom Doyle and Jolyon Hofsted.^[3]

From 1965 to 1968, Susan Grabel lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and studied ceramic sculpture at California College of the Arts, Oakland, with Viola Frey and Vernon Coykendall .^[4] In 1969 Grabel debuted ceramic sculpture at Pace College Art Gallery that was acquired by The American Museum of Ceramic Art, Pomona, in 2023.

In 1970 Grabel moved to Staten Island, New York when her husband George Rappaport, received a teaching position at Wagner College. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s the artist was active in the figurative co-op gallery movement that took place in SoHo. Her work first appeared at Women in the Arts Gallery located on Broome Street^[5] and then primarily at Prince Street Gallery until the mid-1980s.^[6] She is currently showing with Ceres Gallery.^[7]