SUSAN HENSEL online Exhibition | Susan Hensel Projects

2020-10-22T17:40:39-05:00Exhibition, Articles|

SUSAN HENSEL ONLINE EXHIBITION! Geometric Stitch Opening July 13 SUSAN HENSEL ONLINE EXHIBITION, Geometric Stitch, the first online exhibition curated from Susan Hensel Projects. With the changing art market situation, I have decided to begin curating online exhibitions on my website. Every couple of months I will be posting new groups of work and essays.  Real, almost live, exhibitions!  Or as safely live as we can get during the pandemic. […]

Juggling As Fast As I Can | COVID-19 Time | Susan Hensel Projects

2020-07-08T17:58:35-05:00Articles, News|

IT’S COVID-19 TIME, in which weeks pass in a day and a day takes weeks. TIME TO JUGGLE AGAIN! It is admittedly hard to develop flow in the studio when I have to stop and “juggle” again! I was very pleased a few weeks ago when a long-planned for the show was approved to open in August in Tallahassee, Florida.  The state was opening up and so was 621 Gallery, with COVID-19 safety guidelines in place.  The show is 3/4 packed and scheduled for pick-up in a couple of weeks. But COVID-19 has its own sense of time.  Florida has now exploded with the virus again, the show has been delayed indefinitely again and I will take all these perfectly packed boxes back to storage, making more room to work in the studio. […]

Friendship And Practical Advice | Free Resources For Artists | Susan Hensel Projects

2020-07-08T17:59:57-05:00Articles, News|

Friendship and practical advice. My friend, Martha Bird, is a maker of traditional and sculptural basketry. She is a wonderful neighbor and friend I love going to for friendship and practical advice. We support each other on many levels. We bond over art, poodles and the power of art to support and help us heal from pains of being human. She came to this game of art later than I did (I think I was born making art) and it has been awe-inspiring to see her soar. You really should spend time on her new website. Wonderful images await you there. Which leads me to this: […]

Want to see something pretty?| textile artist Susan Hensel | Susan Hensel Projects

2020-07-08T18:00:47-05:00Articles, News|

New opportunities are starting to bear fruit for textile artist Susan Hensel. Throughout the pandemic, the cultural unrest and economic downturn, it has been hard to believe that the hard work of the studio will be worth the effort. Truthfully I have slogged through the work of finishing things, photographing things,  boxing up things, adding data to my website.  Slogged. However, it has been hard to feel creative or excited in the midst of such huge changes. But I truly believe that art is more important now than ever. It has the potential to heal, to take people out of their daily troubles, even if only for a moment.  It can be a transcendent experience of peace. So I continued to work and send images out. […]

Why I persist | Covid and civil unrest | Susan Hensel Projects

2020-06-17T11:39:02-05:00Articles, Embroidery Art, News|

“Hope is a fragile thing, Peter continued, as fragile as a flower. Its fragility makes it easy to sneer at, by people who see life as a dark and difficult ordeal, people who get angry when something they can’t believe in themselves gives comfort to others. They prefer to crush the flower underfoot as if to say: See how weak this thing is, see how easily it can be destroyed. But, in truth, hope is one of the strongest things in the universe. Empires fall, civilizations vanish into dust, but hope always comes back, pushing up through the ashes, growing from seeds that are invisible and invincible.”-Michael Faber Many of you know that I live in Minneapolis, MN.  This is where the civil unrest began, with the homicide of George Floyd, in the midst of the COVID 19 pandemic. The central east-west corridor that services my neighborhood, is destroyed. There are no grocery stores, no liquor stores, no pharmacies, no library, few banks, few post offices, and only one gas station, and few low-income apartments remain.  But we persist. And I persist in this studio.  My work is more important than ever.  Yesterday I wrote this post on Facebook for [...]

The Art Business in times of Covid | Susan Hensel Projects

2020-05-27T11:41:45-05:00Articles|

  What have you been doing during this pandemic? I’ve been reading about business! What have you been doing during this pandemic? I am looking at the gallery scene, mostly in the US.  I have been listening to interviews with people like David Zwirner and Jeffrey Deitch.  Reading online magazines: The Art Newspaper, Artnet News, Hyperallergic, Artsy, Artspace.  It has been very interesting. Like many artists, nearly 100% of my planned exhibitions were delayed or canceled. I’m not yet suffering financially, although most artists are.  Most galleries are in or about to be in dire straits. Some of the artist-run spaces I know are closing. So are some of the mid-sized spaces. Studio crawls are attempting to go virtual. Museums are shut as tight as a drum! […]

Log Rhythm | Music, Wordplay and Numbers | Susan Hensel Projects

2020-05-28T16:19:02-05:00Articles, Embroidery Art|

Music, Wordplay, and Numbers This new piece, Log Rhythm, is actually a tribute to my father. Not only did he love to play with music and words, but he also loved to play with numbers. My father was an engineer who loved music, wordplay, and numbers.  He could play a tune on any instrument that he picked up.  Mostly he played ragtime on our upright piano and comedic songs on the concertina. (I never played ragtime. I thought I was the next  Edith Piaf, composing and singing heartbreakingly dolorous songs as a teenager.) At Christmas we would go caroling around the neighborhood with my father leading the pack, playing the concertina. […]

What do Jazz & Machine Embroidery Have in Common? | Digital Embroidery

2020-05-26T11:25:49-05:00Articles, News|

What do jazz and digital embroidery have in common? Part of the answer is in this small interview I did on Jazz88 FM. https://www.jazz88.fm/2020/04/20/artist-susan-hensel/ Radio host Emily Reese has been interviewing artists during the “time of COVID” to see what and how they are doing! What I am doing is this: updating my website, writing blog posts, and, yes, plodding forward finishing some larger pieces, and testing out ideas. I talked about the business side of art. I also spoke about how I work improvisationally at the embroidery machines and how I got started in machine embroidery. […]

An Artist’s Studio Life is More Than You Think | Susan Hensel Projects

2020-04-24T15:49:01-05:00Articles, Embroidery Art|

Studio life for artist Susan Hensel is a lot of things.  It is playing with colors, materials, and ideas: the fun stuff.  It is making decisions about how to handle material mistakes: also fun stuff.  This piece, Jester: Clown of God, started as one thing and became another because of inconsistencies that turned up in the stitch-out.  I can’t even see the “problems” anymore, because the piece became itself once I draped it over a chair.  The paradoxical heaviness of the fabric against the visual lightness of spirit reminded me of a story by Tomi DiPaola: The Clown of God,  about a character who used his unique talent to bring goodness to the world. So absurd, to think that a talent for juggling could be so valued. But isn’t that what art does for us? That’s all well and good…but if you are an exhibiting artist, you will probably need to ship the work that you had so much fun making.  […]

Studio In the Time of ???| Embroidery Art | Susan Hensel Projects

2020-04-06T19:57:06-05:00News, Articles, Embroidery Art|

Studio time is LIFE. It is connectional, unrelenting, seeks order out of chaos and, in this time of the COVID-19 pandemic, it stacks up against the unexpected and unpredictable future.  Art IS long and demands to be made and put out in the universe.  But meanwhile, galleries, art fairs, and museums are closed down.  How many will re-open when it is safe to gather again?  The online marketplaces try to keep up, bringing in a trickle of income. What is it like for artists in the COVID-19 quarantine? […]

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