Susan Leibovitz Steinman cofounded WEAD in 1995 with Jo Hanson and Estelle Akamine. She is editor-in-chief, executive editor, and creator of WEAD Magazine, an online journal of critical activist art essays.
Susan is an activist, social sculptor, and ecofeminist. She produces large-scale “greenscapes” involving diverse stakeholder participation. Exhibited globally, her art models ecological strategies: organic gardens, slow food, community revitalization, native plants, and clean rivers. Her gallery and museum work incorporates salvage and organic materials. She is currently creating a watercolor series on global warming.
She earned a BA in journalism from the University of Maryland and an MFA in sculpture from California College of the Arts. She taught public art and sculpture at California State University Monterey Bay in Seaside, California, and at California State University, East Bay in Hayward, California.
In 1991, Susan became one of the first artists in residence at San Francisco’s “dump,” Recology, creating its three-acre sculpture garden. She has received many awards and honors since then, including:
- Potrero Nuevo Fund Prize (2000)
- LEF Foundation Grant (1998)
- Nancy Gray Foundation Grant (1998)
- Eureka Fellowship nominee, Fleishhacker Foundation (1996)
- High Merit Award, Women Artists ’89, a national, juried show (1989)
Her art has also been featured in several publications, such as:
- Ecovention: Current Art to Transform Ecologies (2022) by Susan Spaid
- Green Acres: Artists Farming Fields, Greenhouses, and Empty Lots (2012), by Susan Spaid
- Culture, Nature: Art and Philosophy in the Context of Urban Development (2009), edited by Harald Lemke and Anke Haarmann
- New Practices – New Pedagogies: A Reader (2005), edited by Malcolm Miles
- Ecological Aesthetics: Art in Environmental Design: Theory and Practice (2004), edited by Heike Strewlow, Herman Prigann, and Vera David
- Women Artists in the American West (2003), edited by Susan Ressler
She was also a contributor to Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Art (1994), edited by Suzanne Lacy. (Mapping the Terrain was digitized and made available for free download in 2017 by the Internet Archive with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation.)