Introducing DVSSIMA
Pax et bonum.
DVSSIMA, LLC is a New York–based artistic house founded by composer, soprano, and Third Order Franciscan Dr. Stephanie Susberich, dedicated to the cultivation of beauty and the recognition of the sacred in artistic life.
Founded as an intimate classical music salon inspired by the historical European salon tradition, DVSSIMA has grown into a broader artistic vision rooted in the conviction that beauty is not merely an object of admiration, but a means of approaching the divine. Its purpose is to create spaces in which music, poetry, intellectual exchange, and artistic expression are treated with the reverence and attention they deserve.
At the spiritual heart of DVSSIMA is the Sacred Heart of Jesus, whose image inspires its emblem and expresses the founding principles of the house. In Catholic devotion, the Sacred Heart reveals a divine love that is both wounded and inexhaustible, uniting sacrifice with mercy, suffering with redemption, and the human heart with the eternal. For DVSSIMA, this image is not merely ornamental. It represents the belief that beauty and artistic creation can bear witness to something greater than themselves, and that the sacred has an enduring and necessary place in contemporary culture.
Rooted in classical music yet extending beyond it, DVSSIMA draws upon the salon tradition as a setting for artistic encounter. Its gatherings bring together original compositions, literature, and interdisciplinary performances in an atmosphere of intimacy and thoughtful exchange. Each event is conceived as a complete artistic experience, in which repertoire, architecture, visual presentation, conversation, and human presence contribute to a unified whole.
DVSSIMA embraces the relationship between the senses as an essential part of artistic experience. Sound possesses color and texture; silence shapes musical form; gesture and space influence the way music is heard and understood. This attention to the sensuous qualities of art does not stand apart from its spiritual purpose. Rather, DVSSIMA recognizes the capacity of thoughtfully cultivated material beauty to awaken contemplation and direct the imagination toward what lies beyond immediate perception.
The house develops its artistic vision through several forms:
DVSSIMA Salons — Intimate, invitation-based gatherings in distinctive New York City spaces, bringing classical performance into conversation with poetry, philosophy, and social exchange.
DVSSIMA Concerts — Curated public performances devoted to vocal and instrumental music, original composition, and works of historical, literary, and spiritual significance.
DVSSIMA Pop-Ups — Site-responsive performances that bring classical and operatic music into unexpected spaces, creating opportunities for encounters with art beyond the conventional concert hall.
Guided by a Franciscan understanding of beauty as a gift and a responsibility, DVSSIMA approaches artistic creation as an act of stewardship. Excellence in craft is joined to humility, refinement to generosity, and artistic ambition to an awareness of the dignity of both the work and those who bring it into being. The house seeks not merely to present art, but to honor it, and to cultivate an environment in which artists and audiences encounter one another with sincerity, attentiveness, and respect.
The ethos of DVSSIMA is elegantine: refined, attuned, contained, and luminous. The word originates in Dr. Susberich’s earliest poetic language, first appearing in a poem she wrote at the age of five, describing the movement of her own voice as twilight vines streaming through deep waters, yearning toward what lies just beyond reach. That sensibility remains central to the house: a quality that draws without force, that listens as much as it speaks, and that gestures toward the threshold where art becomes prayer, and beauty is approached with reverence.
Rooted in the Franciscan spiritual tradition, DVSSIMA is committed to preserving the place of beauty, contemplation, and the sacred in contemporary life. Its vision is not confined to explicitly religious art, but extends to artistic expressions capable of revealing dignity, mystery, and the possibility of transcendence.
DVSSIMA — velvet like violet opal.
