In 1996, Susanne Forestieri was the winner of the prestigious National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in painting. As an NEA fellowship winner she is represented in the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. In the catalogue of NEA recipients, her work is described by curator Kathleen Shields as "small in scale but, like flashes of memory, the layers of felt experience they invoke are expansive."

In 2003, she had her first museum exhibition entitled Revealing Women at the Las Vegas Art Museum. Because her work was so well received, the exhibition was remounted and exhibited again later that year. Her figurative paintings have been shown in the National Academy and the American Museum of Illustration in New York City, and reproduced in the Society of Illustrators' 28th Annual (1985).

Ms. Forestieri was selected to represent Las Vegas for the 100th anniversary of the city's founding. The exhibition entitled Moving Pictures will be the first show in 2005 at the city's Charleston Heights Art Center.

Ms. Forestieri's recent one-person exhibitions include The Winchester Center Gallery, Las Vegas, Nevada (1999) and Riverside Community College, Riverside, California (1997). Other recent exhibits include 5 Easy Pieces at the Nevada Institute for Contemporary Art (1997), Soft Landings at McCarran International Airport, Las Vegas, Nevada (1996) and Different Looks II in the Metcalf Gallery, University of Nevada, Las Vegas (1997).

A portrait she created of her parents, entitled "Wish You Were Here, "(see Wish You Were Here) was selected by Philip Pearlstein for the exhibition Contemporary Portraits from the Northeast in New Haven, Connecticut (1987). Because of her renown as an artist in the Las Vegas community, she was commissioned by United States Senator Harry Reid to paint his portrait, which was installed in the Harry Reid Elementary School in his hometown of Searchlight, Nevada.

In a statewide competition in 2001, she was awarded a commission to create a ten foot by thirty foot mural to be installed in a new addition to the Las Vegas McCarran Airport. Its theme is the history of flight in Las Vegas. The mural is presently a work in progress

Ms. Forestieri currently is the art director at Imprints Day School, a Las Vegas private school that demonstrates a strong commitment to the arts by making visual art, music, dance, and drama integral components of its daily curricula.