Susan Hensel: Radical Beauty

NOAA. Digital embroidery programming, felt, muslin, tri-lobal embroidery thread, pellon, adhesives, hand sewing, machine sewing, computer aided embroidery, foundry mould, paint, foam, wood, sintra, "gold" leaf, brass, procion or indigo dye, various pins

Firmament. Digital embroidery programming, felt, tri-lobal embroidery thread, adhesives, computer aided embroidery, foundry mould, paint, foam, wood, brass, various pins

Multimedia artist, Susan Hensel

Neotectonic Ancient Period 2. Plaster, paint, micro-crystalline wax, reclaimed barnwood, digital embroidery programming, felt, tri-lobal embroidery thread, adhesives, computer aided embroidery, heat activated adhesive, aluminum screen, wood armature

Collapse 1. Digital embroidery, brass, beads

Water Course. Digital textile fused to aluminum screen, acrylic rod, plumbing fixtures on reclaimed wood

Neotectonic Ancient Period 1. Plaster, digital embroidery, paint, wax, armature

Atmospheric River. Reclaimed barnwood, aluminum strap, digital embroidery programming, felt, tri-lobal embroidery thread, computer aided embroidery, heat activated adhesive, aluminum screen, wood armature

Constellations in a Moon-Dark Sky. Digital embroidery programming, felt, tri-lobal embroidery thread, adhesives, computer aided embroidery, foundry mould, various pins, brass screen

And the Stars Will Fall. Digital embroidery, thread, reclaimed wood, plywood, brass beads

Multidisciplinary artist Susan Hensel is known for her sculptural textile work, echoing the organic shapes and colors of the world around us. Susan’s work is intricate, complex, and rooted in a desire to uplift the viewer. Through her work, Susan provides us with an opportunity to experience radical beauty in its truest form.

How did your creative journey begin?

At birth? I do not remember a time when I was not creatively engaged. Some of my earliest memories involve drawing and gluing things together. My family was encouraging and creative. My parents came from a generation of educated people who believed in the importance of music and visual art to the development of a person. My mother was a teacher and my father a professor of engineering. They were Great Depression era people, so they did not grow up with wealth.  But they did get routine exposure to museums and music. They provided similar experiences for their children.

Where do you find inspiration for your work?

I don’t really think in terms of inspiration. Inspiration is an odd word to me, implying that I must “wait for the muse” to bless me with an idea <giggle>. I don’t wait for the next great idea.  I have structured my life and my studio around making it easy to keep working.  I keep materials in stock and reasonably organized.  I read. I write. I meditate. I learn. I keep a reliable studio schedule. Whatever is in me, somehow comes out consistently within this structure. With the foundation secure, I can do anything in the studio. I have true freedom here. This is where my true self exists, in that freedom!

 How has your work shifted and evolved over time?

I am trained as both a sculptor and a painter. That means that I have many skills in many materials. As a result, my work has always been very materially oriented and is an embodiment of the ideas that obsess me at any given time. My intent, regardless of media or finished body of work, is to influence a person’s experience of the world for the good of the individual and, hopefully, the greater community. I intentionally keep the themes of the work open-ended so the viewer/participant can insert themselves in the story.

The ideas and media have shifted and refined over time, although there is a shockingly consistent desire beneath it all that involves slowing down and sinking into personal and community healing through the full body experience of beauty.

1972-1988 I began my professional career as a clay worker, creating porcelain dinnerware. My goal was to create visually and tactilely beautiful pots that changed/slowed down the experience of eating and drinking as community practice.

1987-2010 Handmade paper and books entered the equation, continuing the focus on beauty and tactility. I think of artists books as slow, private performances, activated by the viewer.  The combination of open-ended writing, printmaking, and bookbinding created experiences for people to go deeper into personal meaning.

2000-2015 Installation and performance art continued these practices, often including an editioned artist book as the take-home.  In these situations, a full body, full sensory, immersive experience was created using all media, sound and scent as needed. The experiences tended toward politics and nostalgia as vehicles for contemplation. Themes explored were: universal creativity, genocide, aging, sexuality, fantasy, play, feminism.

2014 until now.  I began working in computer aided machine embroidery, developing a discreet experience of what I call “radical beauty”. “Radical beauty” is not about pretty décor nor reproducing lush landscapes or beautiful faces any more than civility is about being nice.  It is deeper and more political than that.  “Radical beauty” is about creating glimpses of the world we want to see by providing “moments” of awe, meditation, surprise that might invite the viewer into action for healing of the planet, relationships, cultures, environments. I exploit the mechanics of the embroidery machine and the physics of light as it interacts with the triangular thread to create changeable, luminous, transforming experiences.

I make sculptural textile work, transforming personal experience, private and public spaces, with experiences of beauty, through the alchemy of color, scale, lighting and placement. I combine mixed-media practices with fabric and embroidery across digital and manual platforms. The size of this work ranges from tabletop to architectural scale.

What does a typical day in the studio look like for you, and how has your art practice grown or changed?

I show up between 9 and 10 am and finish by 8pm, with 1-hour breaks for lunch and dinner, 5-6 days per week. I usually leave the studio with the next step obvious in a project. I often make a list of tasks before bed. I rigorously DO NOT WORK 1 day per week, and that is hard because I really, really love being in the studio. Taking that break, however, refreshes my brain…it’s like hitting a reset button.

On a typical day, my work is split between:

• the maintenance tasks of a busy studio: inventory, photography, emails, promotions, ordering, shipping
• research
• materials play and production

Mornings are spent largely on maintenance.  There is always a lot of administration to accomplish.  Eight hours per week I have an assistant whose focus is admin, which is GREAT! She is whipping my inventory into shape, keeping the archival material sort of in order, designing catalogs for the exhibits I curate and helping me update the website. With her help I hope to get the artwork inventory numbers up to date and ON the artwork soon!  She is also now receiving training from my other helper who builds my boxes.  Hooray!

In the afternoon I turn on Spotify in my earbuds and allow myself a lot of LOOKING and wondering and dancing. I might be digitizing new designs, using purpose built software to “draw with thread.” This is the one activity that takes me utterly out of myself as a creature in time. The hours pass like seconds!

The embroidery machines run in an intoxicating rhythm all day and night.  I look at them to see if I like the progress, the colors, the accidents and wonder about new ways to use and abuse the finished modules.  I look at the vintage wood foundry-molds (my current obsession) and figure out what they are telling me.  I cut up failed stitch-outs and combine them in new ways. I build armatures, hanging mechanisms and frames. I LOOK at all the debris that this studio produces and try to figure out ways to use it or donate it.

Which experiences have impacted your work as an artist?

Growing up in the 1950’s, before televisions were ubiquitous, I was free to wander, discovering relationships among objects and bugs and trees and people.  Mixing mud soup for my dolls.  Tying together sticks to make “stuff.” Playing imaginatively with all sorts of art and non-art materials. I spent my allowance and birthday money on drawing materials, beautiful books and candy. The habit of creative imagination was well developed by the time I entered school.

My early adolescent experience of living in Taiwan for the year of my father’s sabbatical affected my overall esthetic. Looking over my long career, much of my work has a sense of that experience, whether it be the color choices or the compositions.

My uncle was an architect in Washington, DC.  I spent a week with him when I was 13 or 14.  He dropped me off at the National Gallery every day.  I went from room to room in a methodical manner, LOOKING, SEEING all the great art and getting to know the guards who began to expect me.  At the end of the trip my uncle bought me a large set of dry pastels which I treasure, and use, with lots of replaced chalks, to this day.

When I was around 15, my sister went off to college to study math and history.  From the art students she learned about the NEW kind of paint: acrylics! It was a revelation.  She bought me a set.

Toward the end of high school my parents arranged for me to study with Wayne Thiebaud when he was an artist-in-residence at Cornell University and got permission for me to attend the figure drawing studio on campus. Then, at the very end of high school my art teacher shared an opportunity with me: Go to Italy with other teenagers and study language, art history and attend the local art academy! I approached my parents wondering if it was even possible!  We agreed to split the cost!  So, I went. And I did study language, art history, drawing…and, of course, BOYS.

Eight years ago, I discovered a “blue” unlike any blue I had ever seen before.  I had never considered myself a colorist or a color hoarder… but I had to possess that blue!  That “ultra” ultramarine blue was being stitched out on a computer aided embroidery machine at the Minnesota State Fair.  It took several years of grant writing and loans to buy the equipment, get the training, and put in the hours of experiment, discovery, failure, and success to get to where I am today: at play in the fields of color perception!

How has Instagram impacted your art career?

Instagram is a great exhibition platform, connecting me with artists, institutions, and collectors all over the world. It has increased my visibility as an artist many times over.I use it to drive people to my webpage and to my gallery site on Artsy.net.  I also use it to test out ideas and get feedback. I have been involved in auctions and curated exhibitions on Instagram. I have been invited to exhibit based on Instagram.  I have been invited to contribute to an international fiber magazine. I have bought work from artists on Instagram, and they have bought work from me. It is also a great research tool! I find artists and venues that interest me. I look at who is being shown where and consider where my work might fit.

What are your future goals and aspirations?

I want to work until the day I die. I believe I am doing my best work now, in my 70’s.

Goals:

  • Continue to work

  • Continue to exhibit in better and better galleries

  • Get the artwork into secure art storage…this year!

  • Sell and donate more work to museums

  • Refine my estate plan to handle my remaining artwork by forming a foundation if practical

Aspirations

  • Have a museum retrospective before I die

  • Actually get the inventory numbers ON the artwork!

  • Clone myself in the studio or be able to afford a really competent manager

  • Live long enough to experience world peace

  • Die old and happy with most of my marbles intact

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