Susan Lordi: The Artist Who Creates Willow Tree®

1. Susan Lordi: The Artist Who Creates Willow Tree® Susan Lordi is the artist behind the intricately hand-painted figurative sculptures available from Willow Tree®. Visitors can choose artwork from Lordi for the special people in their lives by visiting willowtree.com. Her intimate line of sculptures, including figurine ornaments and cake toppers, speak in quiet ways to provide comfort, love, and support, as well as to celebrate and inspire. Each Willow Tree® piece is cast from Lordi’s original carvings and individually hand-painted. Her signature work is recognizable for its simplicity of form and absence of facial expressions. Instead, emotions are communicated through gestures only, conveyed by a slight tilt of the head, a warm embrace, placement of the hands, and a turn of the body. It’s intentional because Lordi wants the interpretation to be left open to the individual. The viewer gets to decide the meaning of the piece, which makes it all the more personal. Lordi’s ideas come from her own life experiences and understanding of the world. She believes that for her pieces to be personal, they need to be truthful. You can choose single sculptural figures or make your own family grouping to reflect your relationships, whether it’s between brothers and sisters, grandparents, couples, and even pets. Willow Tree® is also well-known for their touching Nativity Collection, in which you can purchase individual nativity figurines to build your display or get a complete set all at once.

2. Lordi describes herself as a “maker,” someone who’s always thinking about making art if she’s not already working on a project. She’s sketching, carving, and forming in clay all at once. Her unique approach is what makes each piece truly special. Over the past 20 years, she has started incorporating delicate patterns of pierced metal as well as pressed gold leaf and dots onto the surface of some of her sculptures. In addition to nativities, cake toppers, and angel ornaments, she also creates musical figures, keepsake boxes, plaques, tree toppers, and more. Lordi’s thoughtful pieces make great best friend gifts, as well as gifts for holidays, birthdays, graduations, weddings and anniversaries, spiritual milestones, new beginnings, teacher appreciation, and more. Lordi also has an interesting background working with textile art. She has exhibited her fiber artwork internationally. Her work is featured in the book “Art Textiles of the World: USA,” and a monograph of her art textiles was published in the “Portfolio Collection” by Telos Art Publishing. She has a master’s in fine arts with honors in textile design from the University of Kansas. Her studio is located in Kansas City, Missouri. For more information about Lordi and to browse the entire Willow Tree® collection, visit https://www.willowtree.com/