It is with great sadness that I must report the passing of Cybis artist Susan Clark Eaton on May 22, 2025. She had been battling a recurrence of cancer since early this year. Although she already has an Artist Profile here in the Archive, this memorial page will delve deeper into her life and the art that she created in addition to her sculptures for Cybis.
Susan was born on August 19, 1943 in Cincinnati, Ohio to her parents Margaret and Alban Clark. In one of our email exchanges, she told me that
At age 3 my Mom and I were watching a farmer near our house plowing a field with two horses and the wonderful fellow stopped and offered to put me on a horse! Terrified my Mom but bless her she let me, and I remember sitting up there and holding on to the manes even now. And rode for many years after even though [we] moved a lot, had some great teachers and finally got my own.
Before she was seven years old her parents moved to Winnebago, Illinois to live with her paternal grandparents, Grant and Florence Clark. Grant Clark was a minister and Florence was a kindergarten teacher; Susan’s father worked at a tool-and-die factory, and her mother was a sales clerk at a clothing store. At the age of nine, she begged her parents for a set of wood-carving tools and began experimenting with carving horses. Eventually her family moved to Bucks County, Pennsylvania and after graduating from high school Susan enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia and studied there for a year.
As a teenager, Sue continued her equestrian activities at the historic Bonnie Brook/Fox Heath farm in Furlong, PA. Her intense commitment to the show ring, the hunt, and most of all to the health of her equine companions and charges, especially those who were entrusted to her care for rehabilitation after injuries, resulted in ever-increasing respect for her from the local show and hunt communities.
In 1973, twenty-year-old Susan Clark married fellow-artist Charles Eaton. The couple created a home on Aquetong Road in the artist community of New Hope, PA where they had space to indulge their love of horses. Their house, in fact, was built in the shape of a horseshoe with one side being residential and the other serving as a stable. In another of our emails, Sue described how
Ultimately the farm/house had five stalls and usually I owned at least two of [the horses] and had boarders as well. Did all the shoveling, I might add! I was so fortunate to have had the chance to know these wonderful creatures and still love them now. All beasties really…birds, bugs, etc. Just have trouble with hatefilled humans.
In March 1982 a local paper, The Daily Intelligencer in Doylestown, PA, ran a feature article about Susan and her work in which they mentioned that she was currently a freelance artist for Goebel. On that subject, Susan quipped
Don’t get the idea they buy from you to support you as an artist. They buy simply because they know it will sell. But still, I suppose, it’s some measure of success to have your creations sold around the world. […] It’d make life a whole lot easier if the studios would put the artist’s name on the piece. My mother would be so happy.
After acknowledging that she works in multiple mediums – drawing, pencil sketching, oil and watercolor painting, wood carving, and clay sculpting – she described a recent commission for a Philadelphia client who wanted a large-scale painting:
He wanted carousel horses done in oils…on a 7-by-10-foot canvas. He ordered it just before Christmas. I had to wait until January for the canvas to come. I worked on that thing eight to ten hours a day, ask Chuck if I didn’t, and by God, I delivered it two weeks ago.
In 1991 Sue was diagnosed with breast cancer; it was the first of three diagnoses over the subsequent decade, and in the ensuing years she had to battle other forms of cancer and debilitating illnesses such as COPD and rheumatoid arthritis. Many of her works were created after she lost the sight of one eye; she was in a pub one evening when two men got into an argument and one of them threw a glass at the other. Shards from the shattered glass struck Susan and resulted in permanent loss of vision. Sue and her husband divorced during the early 2000s.
The last email that I sent to Susan was to give her the link to my Archive page reporting on her inclusion in the 2025 Women’s History Month exhibit at the Museum of American Porcelain Art in Ohio. She responded to me on March 22nd, saying
Thank you so much! More than you know. Am at the finishing line with cancer and it is so nice to get an accolade like this.
Susan Clark Eaton passed away exactly two months later, and the art world lost a very bright and unique light.
The Art of Susan Clark Eaton
All of her sculptures for the Cybis studio and for Lenox porcelain can be seen in her Artist Profile which I wrote in December 2023. In February of this year, she placed second in my published list of the Top Five designers of Cybis porcelain with 39 sculptures, second only to Lynn Klocker Brown‘s 72 (which no single artist is known to have ever exceeded.) Thanks to Susan’s longtime friend Lawrence Booth, president of the New Hope Colony Foundation for the Arts, I have some additional images of some of her art.
This American Buffalo is carved from basswood and mounted on a black walnut base. Basswood (Tilia americana, also known as American linden) is a favored wood for carving because although it is a hardwood, it is lighter than most and has a straight grain and a fine uniform texture. Most traditionally-carved carousel horses are of basswood.
Part of a bronze deer sculpted by Sue Eaton and included in the 1982 Intelligencer article.
A contemporary photo of Sue in the same article.
The January 31, 1992 cover of The Chronicle of the Horse featured her 1989 equine study titled Feathered Friends.
These two greeting cards were printed from two of Sue’s paintings. The dogs are Jack Russell Terriers, one of Sue’s favorite breeds. The whimsy and irony of the hunt participants is inescapable!
This photo of Sue was taken inside her home/studio in Doylestown, PA in February 2019. The amount of time and work needed to create this massive chicken-wire trout is truly staggering! If stood upright on its tail, it would be almost five feet tall.
Final Thoughts
Although I never had the privilege of meeting Sue Eaton in person, the emails and phone calls that we exchanged gave me a clear sense of what an exuberant, lively, and incredibly creative person she was. I’d like to share a few of the observations that she expressed on various subjects and people.
I started porcelain sculpting when I went to Cybis at 25…did strictly personal models in wax before but had been working for Van Nostrand Publishers at that time.
As the studio flunkie I got to work on Jim Slick’s plaster Nashua…he thought of himself as an equal to Richard Stone Reeves, a very successful racehorse portraitist…hell, either Lynn or I could have done that statue.
Helen Granger Young…she was a nice person but got away from porcelain and did large bronzes of notables for parks etc. She would stay with Joe and Marylin and drive them nuts. Expect she felt the same about them.
Thinking back on the porcelain trade, there were some very accomplished folks who never got credit…the occasional ‘big name’ was hyped but often the real work necessary was done by the working crew. Especially true of the Franklin Mint! They got in trouble all the time with violating copyrights.
I rage at the [health care] system that lets some pay or die, and women never given as much aftercare as men either. But we are at least more or less alive thanks to modern medicine…no matter how detached it seems to have become and indifferent to seniors especially.
Sadly, as you know, porcelain..all of it..is bringing pennies now. But at least we did something that brought pleasure, I guess, and did no harm.
That last comment, I think, encapsulates how Sue would too often underestimate her own wonderful talent. Although she was forthright and outspoken, she never – as the saying goes – ‘tooted her own horn’ even though she had every reason in the world to do so. The people who knew her, especially fellow artists, recognized her light. I was gratified to learn that the Huntingdon Valley Hunt Club will be doing a memorial service in her honor on Saturday, August 9th, and that the New Hope Colony Foundation for the Arts hopes to mount an exhibition of her work before the end of this year.
Rest in peace, Susan. We will all miss you.
For further reading about Susan Clark Eaton and her sculptures for Cybis:
Cybis Artist Profile: Susan Clark Eaton (Cybis and Lenox)
The Top Five Designers of Cybis Porcelain
Women’s’ History Month Exhibit at the MAPA
‘Circuses and Carousels’ Exhibit at the MAPA
Cybis Carousel Horses
The Cybis Carousel Animals
The Cybis Horses
Cybis Unicorns and Pegasi
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Name Index of Cybis Sculptures
Visual Index (for human figures/busts only)
About the Cybis Reference Archive
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