Genesis of an Artwork

Nothing Wasted at Susan Hensel Projects

Artworks come from various sources…including failure! Experimentation and intuition are key-words for Susan Hensel Projects.

Genesis of an Artwork. When people visit the studio and see me at work, they are often astounded.  They expect that everything I do is strictly mechanical…that I design the artwork in the computer and then let the embroidery machine do its thing…turning out perfect, completed hands-free objects every time.  Boy oh boy!  That hardly ever, if ever, happens!

Let me take you through how Solar Tide came to be. You will be astounded, too.

According to Genesis in the Christian Bible, God took 7 days to create the world.

Well, it took me a whole lot longer than that to create Solar Tide.

This is how Solar Tide began.

It was supposed to be something else entirely. However, the stitch out had a major glitch!  This  40″ x 18″ stitch-out was supposed to be veils of color with an inset in the rectangle in the middle.  Well, one of the veils stitched out thick, heavy and utterly opaque. User error?  Machine error?  I don’t know.

It wound up looking like a giant, bug-eyed, squashed, aqua toad!  Not what I was going for at all!  And I did not want to waste those hours and hours of stitching!

Radical adjustments needed to be made

  I tried adding a form in the middle

I tried a horizontal composition.

I added more stuff and went vertical again. It was what we technically call a hot mess!
Nothing was working.  So, it was time to cut it up!

Because the piece had been stretched, glued, stapled, sewn every which-way-to-Sunday, this was all that was salvageable! So I built some odd stretchers and continued composing.  I tried lots of things.

Finally I found this composition:

But that wasn’t right, either.  The piece was too bottom heavy.

So, I tried these:

Finally…I got HERE:SOLAR TIDE

After days and days of experimentation, exploration, defeat and intuitive leaps, the piece was complete! And it was GOOD!
Very little material was wasted.

(By the way, it took a whole lot longer than 7 days.)