By Claire Chow ’26

Nigel Sussman ’01 grew up in Waynesboro, PA, surrounded by art–his father is a musician, his mother studied textiles, and both his grandmothers were painters. From a young age, when he wasn’t playing guitar, Sussman would doodle. A product of his environment, he is now an illustrator and muralist in Berkeley, CA. 

Prior to Mercersburg, Sussman went to public school, where the arts were not represented well. Sussman said Mercersburg was attractive due to its facilities and resources.
He began attending Mercersburg in 1998 and was a day student for three years, boarding his senior year. Sussman said his experience at Mercersburg was valuable because he was encouraged to push limits. Here, he further developed his love for art and took advanced art classes taught by husband-wife faculty duo Mark Flowers P ’01, ’03 and Kristy Higby P ’01, ’03. 

Flowers first met Sussman at a gathering for incoming students. “I remember it well because he was wearing clothes that he made himself,” Flowers said. “I immediately liked him and knew he would be a different student.” 

Since Sussman was around 11, his father, the executive director of Cumberland Valley School of Music, commissioned him to create designs for summer camp T-shirts. At Mercersburg, Sussman was often asked to design T-shirts and visual collateral for events–his favorite being for Irving-Marshall Week.

If he had to pick a Mercersburg Moment, Sussman’s senior project would be it. He and a couple of other art students, including Flowers and Higby’s son Carson ’01, opened a mini coffee shop and music venue (where they booked acts from all over), known as Second Story Wheat, in Boone Hall–where arts productions were held prior to the opening of the Burgin Center for the Arts. Sussman took on the role of painting an entire stairwell, and remembers spending a lot of time there. He expressed his gratitude to Mercersburg for allowing him to “be motivated and free-thinking without that much structure.” He also regarded this as a formative experience in becoming a mural artist.

Sussman continued designing T-shirts for his father throughout college. His two years at Carnegie Mellon University allowed him to realize he was more interested in detail and the “pure craft” of art, rather than the rhetoric and persuasion of the artist. As a result, he transferred to California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland for its illustration program, which he found to be a good fit, as it emphasized visual communication. After graduating, Sussman worked in advertising, creating illustrations in his free time. 

In 2014, Sussman was offered a job relocation from San Francisco, CA, to Portland, OR, fully funded by the company where he had worked for six years. After a weeklong trial in Oregon, he decided he wasn’t ready to move away from the sunny beaches of California, where he had just bought a new place with his wife, Yasemin. At the same time, he discovered there was so much demand for illustration that he no longer needed his day job, so he quit and started working for himself. He has since worked on murals on both coasts, mainly
in California. 

Sussman had always intended to pursue a career in the arts. “There’s nothing else I wanted to do, really, and so I would do it in my free time, too, and for fun,” he said, noting that not having to be told to do an activity is a good hint that an interest is really a passion. His advice to current students is to “do something that feels productive and that you like, and if you actually do spend energy on it, the money will come if you’re smart about it.” 

Claire Chow, who lives in Hong Kong, was an intern in the Communications Office during the fall term.