Susan Cofer is an Atlanta, Georgia, native born in 1943. She attended the art school at Mrs. High’s house as a child. That school eventually became the Atlanta College of Art and the house gave way to the Woodruff Arts Center. She left Atlanta to study Art History at Hollins College (now Hollins University) in Roanoke, Virginia. She received her BA degree in 1964, the same year she married Carl Cofer. Their two daughters were born in 1966 and ’67.
She taught art and art history at the Lovett School for several years in the 1960s and took studio art courses at Atlanta College of Art and Georgia State University. She had her first solo exhibition at the Heath Gallery in 1976. She has been exhibiting regularly since then. Among her solo exhibits were shows at Savannah College of Art and Design in 1982, a site-specific installation at Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in 1989, various exhibitions in different years at Hollins University (1986, 2007, 2014), Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia (2008, 2010), Madison Morgan Cultural Center (1984, 1993, 1997, 2015), Swan Coach House Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia (1992, 1997), and Berry College in Rome, Georgia (1998). Gudmund Vigtel, former director of the High Museum, included her in the “9 Women In Georgia” exhibit at the National Museum of Women in The Arts, Washington, D.C., in 1996.
In 2012-2013 the High Museum of Art exhibited 90 of her works including drawings, sculptures and sketchbooks in a solo show. The curator for that exhibit was Michael Rooks, Wieland Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the High.
Asen Kirin was the curator for an even more comprehensive exhibit at the Madison Morgan Cultural Center in 2015. That exhibition included both her colored pencil drawings and her mixed media portrait sculptures.
Recently, her collection of sketchbooks, 95 in total, plus photos and ephemera, and letters, pertaining to the whole of her life, public and private, were purchased by Emory University’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript and Rare Book Library.