By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

Sculptor Suzanne Long works in figures. But her work is not figurative.

So to speak.

“In a way I don’t consider my work figurative, I consider it narrative,” said Long, the featured artist for October at downtown’s Gallery 621. “It’s more about the story than the figure for me.”

A longtime Benicia resident who now lives in Vallejo, Long is a native of Pennsylvania who moved to the Bay Area in 1991. A graduate of Philadelphia’s Temple University Tyler School of Art, she studied just about every form of art besides sculpture.

“I never took sculpture in school,” she said. But when she decided she wanted to learn more about the art form, she grabbed a bag of clay and just started working with it.

About 17 years ago, Long took a sculpture class at Diablo Valley College. Around the same time she began taking creative writing classes.

The two forms of expression met in her early sculpture.

“It just wasn’t doing it with the 2D work, so I switched to sculpture,” she said. But she didn’t abandon the written word: She embroidered her first figures with her words.

To this day many of her pieces, molded out of clay, are heads and feet and pillow-shaped bodies tattooed with the artist’s prose.

One thing Long’s sculptures lack: arms.

“Sometimes it really disturbs people that there aren’t arms. The work is not representational,” she said. “I’m not trying to do portraiture or anything. The work is far enough away from being a representation of a person, it’s more about the internal life of the person than the external.”

Besides, if you sculpt arms, you must sculpt hands.

“And hands are so expressive. Conceptually it takes away from the simplification of the concept.

“I barely know what to do with my own hands!” she laughed. “If I did hands, they’d all be standing there with their hands in their pockets.”

Long had a studio in the same area of the Arsenal where Arts Benicia now resides, but now she works out of the back of her home in the Vista area of Vallejo.

She also has a business with her partner of 14 years, JoAnne, doing packaging concepts and prototypes. “We do a lot of wine labels, boxes, package engineering,” she said. “It’s such a small niche of what we do.”

Her business is an extension of Long’s many years in production work, which included a stint at The Benicia Herald.

“I’ve just always done it,” she said. “I put myself through school.

“I would have been a terrible waitress, so it all worked out well. It’s like a job for introverts,” she laughed.

She said she started to pursue fine art because commercial illustration could often be unsatisfactory. “In commercial illustration they will have you do three concept sketches. In my experience they’d usually pick the worst one. Then you’d have to produce it!” she said.

“Then you’re in the position of producing something you don’t feel is your best work.”

Freed of such constraints in her personal work, Long imbues many of her sculptures with commentary on social and political issues. “I think with my background in illustration sort of comes through in the political and social commentary in the pieces that I do,” she said. “Most of my work is really personal, but then with 9/11, I couldn’t ignore it. With the Trayvon Martin shooting as well.”

Long joined Gallery 621 in January. “They invited me to participate in the holiday show,” she said. “Then I filled out an application.

“I had known of a couple of the artists before I joined. It’s an amazing group of people. The level of work in the gallery is great.

“To have the diversity in styles and mediums, to have all the work at such a high level, I think it’s just great.”

Suzanne Long’s sculptures are featured at Gallery 621, located at 621 First Street, through November 5. There will be an artist’s reception October 13 from 5 – 8 p.m.