Upcoming show – Viewpoints 2025, Montclair NJ

2025-04-21T15:32:52-04:00Articles, Exhibition|

Susan Hensel – Upcoming show – Viewpoints 2025, Montclair NJ At long last, Susan Hensel is showing in exhibitions once again! Susan has a few shows coming up this spring and into summer, the first of which opens on Friday, Viewpoints 2025. It is an annual juried group show put together by New Jersey-based gallery, Montclair Studios, that she participated in last year as well. Viewpoints 2025 marks the gallery’s 28th year of putting on the juried exhibition and features over 60 artists from across the country. This year, Susan submitted a piece from her Neotectonic Period series, Atmospheric Event 3. There are four atmospheric event pieces in the Neotectonic series which symbolize a pulling apart of the atmosphere. The work deals metaphorically with the effects of climate change, globally and universally.  […]

Have you seen Susan? | Susan Hensel Textile Art |

2024-08-06T23:21:58-04:00Art, Articles, News, Exhibition|

“Hey, Marge…Have you seen Susan recently? View new Textile Art by Susan Hensel “I hear she got her mojo back?” REALLY?   It sometimes seems like I’ve been sleeping, or drifting around underwater, amorphous, like jellyfish or plankton, settling like Marine Sediment. View more textile art below. Other times, the studio was aflame with fury! Strange creatures arrived on pure white paper unbidden, in all their Compressed Complexity! And at yet other times, it required magical, mysterious navigational devices to find my way to the studio, like the Ancient Mariners  textile art of yore. […]

The Ancient Mariner Awakes | New Work | Susan Hensel Projects

2024-02-06T15:10:10-05:00Articles, Embroidery Art|

The Ancient Mariner Awakes | New work | Susan Hensel Projects February 5, 2024, during the winter that did not arrive in Minnesota! Life is a strange thing, de-stabilizing at times.  Whole swaths of time can fly by un-noticed.  I heard on the radio this morning that that sudden awareness of lost time, like the morning commute finishing fast, is evidence of a state of flow.  (Yes, I suppose, but, God forbid,  it could be a black-out as well!)  Sure, sometimes it is a creative time.  But sometimes it really is a lost time, perhaps a hibernation; a period of regrouping, of reconsideration…maybe even a paradigm shift.  […]

Titles Are Weird Things | New Work | Susan Hensel Projects

2025-04-14T16:22:10-04:00Embroidery Art, Articles|

Titles Are Weird Things New Work   Titles are weird things.  I make new work all the time.  Sometimes I know, right from the beginning, what the title of the work will be.  But, more often than not, the finished piece takes time to reveal itself. Sometimes the piece is withholding and it takes help to find the title. That was the case with this piece. I knew that the piece was talking about weather changes, ocean currents, magnetic poles...all kinds of climate change things!  The oceans are key to our survival even as they rise and consume our shorelines and, in concert with rising temperatures, create huge, destructive storms.  My imagery was based on weather maps, navigation maps, longitude lines coming together at the poles, movement that seemed to whirl on the edge of chaos. I started brainstorming: Mapping Currents Heat Maps Mapping Time Change Map None of those were right.  When Sarah came to work, we brainstormed together: Change Sutra Climate Sutra Topographical Sutra We talked about the function of a title in my  abstract art.  I use titles to give clues to my thinking, to open up questions in the viewer so they can ask their [...]

Can Beauty help us | Perhaps a manifesto | Susan Hensel Projects |

2025-04-14T15:34:19-04:00News, Articles|

Can Beauty help us? Perhaps a manifesto Can Beauty help us? I make art to learn what I am thinking and feeling.  While it is always an internal investigation, I am engaged with the world and culture around me. I am a quiet contemplative, a delayed emotional reactor, a visual glutton.  I think and mediate, I get mad the next day and I just simply have to look…all the time. From this essential disposition and with study and thought I have adopted a theory for my artmaking that I call “radical beauty.” So, here goes!  Starting with a few appropriate quotes. […]

NEW WORK | Climate change | Susan Hensel Projects

2021-10-27T14:52:22-04:00Articles, News|

Where Does New Work come from? Vacation?  Climate change? Vacation is a bit different for me than many people.I don’t go for the hiking and boating, although I might do both. Well, maybe not the boating. My stiff knees makes getting in and out of my preferred watercraft, canoes and kayaks, hard. […]

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