Baker Artist Portfolios

Suzanne Coley is a book artist and writer whose work translates literature into material form through textiles, printmaking, and hand-bound structures. Her one-of-a-kind textile books treat stitch, fabric, page, and sequence as systems of interpretation. Grounded in slow reading and slow making, Coley’s practice engages literary structure through material process. She works with historic and vintage textiles, cutting, layering, and recomposing cloth so that material becomes more than illustration; it becomes a way of reading.

A Folger Institute Fellow (2023–2025) and ACMRS (Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies) Fellow, Coley’s work is deeply informed by archival research and classical scholarship. Her current project, 52 Weeks of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (November 2025–November 2026), produces one artwork or textile book each week in response to a single sonnet. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and Ohio University Libraries. Further writings, essays, and process notes can be found on her Substack, Coded Threads by Suzanne Coley.