She and her husband Peter had made a name for themselves in Toronto . . . she as a glass artist, he in the film business.  They had taken the odd weekend get-away at Billy Bear Lodge and sitting there in the evening light enjoying the tranquility and beauty of Bella Lake, they fantasized about a Muskoka lifestyle.  Fast forward a year and a half to 1999 and we find them owning a lot near the lodge, right on the lake, and after some blasting of rock, a nest for their dream house.  They started building and fast established themselves in the artistic community.

It took a number of years to complete the house, five to be exact, and over a year before Susan again had a functioning gallery, but the move has been worth it. Both the house and Susan’s work are a source of pride.  It’s interesting that her output has become much more nature based. The surrounding beauty is constant inspiration.  She takes the time now to explore and work on smaller pieces that don’t immediately hold promise as something marketable but which may lead her to somewhere new. Her work has become more dimension based, sometimes abstract but recognizable. Susan’s glass bowls and platters are an example, allowing her to experiment without a major investment of time and material. She has tried making jewelry but doesn’t enjoy working on such a small scale.

She still relishes the occasional challenge of doing larger projects. Back in Toronto she made hundreds of stained and fused glass windows and enjoyed the planning, consultation and extended fabrication process demanded by such work. She feels that there is a special satisfaction from contributing a permanent artistic element to built-in structures.

Susan started using stained glass in 1979 and then studied drawing, painting and art at the Ontario College of Art and Design. She took numerous courses and workshops in a variety of glass techniques and finally began fusing glass in 1988.  The technique is quite unique. Various shapes are cut from specially formulated sheets of clear and coloured glass, which are multilayered into particular designs and then kiln fired to about 1500 degrees until the pieces melt together and create a solid piece of glass. This glass is then kiln fired again over a mold to create a bowl or platter. The heat and gravity ‘slump’ the softened glass into the mold to create a three dimensional object. The fused firings can take up to 60 hours and sometimes have to be re-melted in the kiln up to three times. The resulting colourful mosaic-like style is quite stunning is readily recognizable as Susan’s work.

One of Susan’s major clients is the Government of Ontario. She has a unique design theme depicting trilliums. The Premier has given her bowls and plates to dignitaries on his trade missions to China, Japan, India and Korea.   What’s interesting is that the Protocol Department realized that white trilliums were not culturally appropriate for India as white flowers are only given at funerals.  She provided a quick solution with red ones, which interestingly enough, are the only trilliums that grow on their property. Susan’s quite flattered to have her work represent the province.

We visited the house and gallery recently.   As a bonus to the impressive work you see in the photographs here in this article is the high quality of Peter’s carpentry.   The care he has put into things like the trim makes the house a work of art in itself. 

For Susan making a living out of her art has not been impeded by the move to the wilderness.  With the aid of the Internet and courier service, she finds the only thing missing from conducting business in downtown Toronto is the face-to-face aspect of dealing with clients. 
She is a founding member of the Artists of Limberlost, a group of exceptional artists that live in her area.  She currently sells her work at the Shutterbug Gallery in Huntsville and the Guild shop in Toronto. You can also view her work at her home studio by appointment.  She can be reached at 705 635-9733 or at susanhiggins@vianet.ca. 

A note to artists thinking about Huntsville, she lives a very, very long way out of town, so there’s lots more inspirational wilderness in between for lots more Susan Higgins.


Karen Cassian is the arts and culture editor of the Huntsville Online