Suzette Mouchaty says, “Nature inspires awe, that sense of wonderment that brings us into the moment and helps us know our humanity.” Her colorful and enchanting “Monument to Sea Slugs” for True North 2024 shed light on one of the many phenomenal creatures of the sea facing extinction. Her 2026 work, “Folly in the Park: The Famous Adventure of the Enchanted Pole and Some Other Things Worth Knowing” is an abstraction of a microscopic aquatic organism—the hydra. This sculpture combines the form of the hydra with that of an emerging egg—a symbol of hope for the future. In this work she has magnified a creature so tiny as to be invisible into an imposing and charismatic form and mimicked the raucous patterns and enthralling colors of marine creatures to assert its presence. Mouchaty earned a BS and MS from University of Alaska, Fairbanks, a Ph.D. in Genetics from Lund University, Sweden, and a Junior Fulbright Fellowship to Sweden. After a long career in academia, she began her formal art studies at Art League Houston and Glassell Studio School, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, before earning an MFA from University of Houston School of Art.