Suzanne Camp Crosby is an award-winning Bay area photographer of note with New York representation (Julie Saul Gallery) and national and international exhibitions. This Hillsborough Community College art professor is enjoying a selective retrospective at HCC art gallery, Ybor campus, through Oct. 3, featuring some of her newer work. Her trademark strategies involve object manipulation and tongue-in-cheek illusion with dolls or other objects posed against staged scenarios and painted backgrounds. In a campy homage to William Wegman, one piece features a lineup of Barbie and Ken dolls with their heads replaced by doggie head magnets purchased at Publix, against a backdrop of antique French fabric. Crosby's newer work is marked by subtle new strategies and a will to experiment beyond her entrenched style (which we obviously admire). Her unselfish devotion to her students has also not gone unnoticed. She recently showed her work along with her former HCC students at Gallery 1906, one of those one-night, old cigar factory happenings that are becoming de rigeur in Tampa's art scene.
This article appears in Sep 25 – Oct 1, 2003.