STITCHERY STORIES
A Conversation
A few weeks ago I had the intense pleasure of speaking with Susan Weeks of the Stitchery Stories Podcast. Though parted by an ocean and a vast time difference. King with her in Great Britain was like talking to my favorite neighbor or long lost friend!
Stitchery Stories, Susan Weeks and I chatted about:
- Getting excited about digital machine embroidery
- The frustrations of inconsistent materials
- Current inspirations from climate change & weather maps
- How Donald Duck’s blue jacket sent her into a life-changing artistic pivot!
- Using techniques & approach appropriate for the ideas you are trying to express
- Evolving beyond the clay & breaking out of the rectangle
- Opening a gallery as a way of meeting new people
- Getting media & press attention
- Artist representation
- Understanding the gallery business
- There are artists everywhere – who have created everything we use
- Switching between ‘business mode’ and ‘creative mode’ can be so difficult
Do click the image below and enjoy the podcast!
Come find rest!
Susan Hensel’s new innovative artwork, which blends commercial embroidery processes with sculptural concerns, is gaining attention and awards. Her knowledge of materials makes it possible for her to create small to large-scale hard-edge sculpture. from soft fabrics that paradoxically keep their crisp form with minimal armatures. Her knowledge of the physics of color allows her to create shape-shifting displays employing the special reflective characteristics of embroidery thread with the goal to create opportunities to experience awe, rest and renewal in daily life.
Hensel’s artwork is known and collected nationwide, represented in collecting libraries and museums as disparate as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and The Getty Research Institute with major holdings at Minnesota Center for Book Arts , University of Washington, Baylor University and University of Colorado at Boulder. Archives pertaining to her artists books are available for study at the University of Washington Libraries in Seattle.
About Susan Hensel
Susan Hensel received her BFA from University of Michigan with a double major in painting and sculpture and a concentration in ceramics. She has a history, to date, of more than 300 exhibitions, 35 of them solo, twenty + garnering awards. In the coming two years, Susan has solo and 2-person and group exhibitions scheduled in Ellicot, MD; Bloomington, MN ; Hopkins, MN; Duluth, MN and the Garrett Museum of Art, Garrett, Indiana. In recent years Hensel has been awarded multiple grants and residencies through the Jerome Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, Art to Change the World and Ragdale Foundation.
Hensel’s curatorial work began in 2000 in East Lansing, Michigan with the Art Apartment and deepened with ownership of the Susan Hensel Gallery in Minneapolis. The Susan Hensel Gallery continues on Artsy.net as an online project promoting Midwest artists with a particular interest in materiality. Hensel has curated over one hundred exhibitions, and supporting events, of emerging and mid-career artists from all over the United States and Canada.
