SUSAN HENSEL PROJECTS: BODIES OF WORK, WORKS OF THE BODY
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​BIOGRAPHY

Susan Hensel received her BFA from University of Michigan in 1972 with a double major in painting and sculpture and a concentration in ceramics.
 
With a history, to date, of over 200 exhibitions, 25 of them solo, twenty garnering awards, Hensel's desire to communicate stories through art continues to be a powerful motivator.
 
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 will be available for study at the University of Washington Libraries in Seattle in 2017.
 
In recent years Hensel has been awarded multiple grants and residencies through the Jerome Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, 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. Hensel has curated over seventy exhibitions of emerging and mid-career artists from all over the United States and Canada. 
 

MENTORING
I am available for mentoring on a variety of subjects:
  • Taking the next step: How to build an exhibition career
  • Getting seen: How to use social media 
  • Productivity in the Studio
  • Grant fulfillment: that second pair of eyes, timelines, advice
  • Critique
  • Technical skills: Hand dyeing, hand spinning, digitizing for machine embroidery, other media

Rates negotiable

PRESENTATIONS 

I am available for studio visits, lectures, panel discussions, and other visiting artist activities.

​Previous engagements have included visits to Emory and Henry College, VA; Chadron State College, NE; Alma College,MI; Lansing State Library, MI; East Lansing Library, MI; Minnesota Center for Book Arts, MN;Hollanders, MI; Habitat for Humanity, MN; Las Vegas Civic Center, NV; Weavers Guild of Minnesota.
ARTIST STATEMENT
 
                              GEOMETRIC EVENTS
 
A single stitch is made by stretching a thread between two holes. The line formed by it can be loose or tight. It can be thick or thin, depending on the diameter of the thread. It can be long or so short that it barely exists. But, it can never exist as more than a single defined geometric event, a sort of singularity. The combinations of these singularities create planes, lines, forms, and geometrical space.
 
For several years, starting with the support of a Jerome Foundation Project Grant for Textile Art in 2014, my intense media focus has been on digitizing for machine embroidery. The process is highly technical, using several software packages that can only be described as a non‑intuitive cross between Photoshop and Illustrator. Creating digital embroidery is limited by the geometry and the capability of both the machine and the materials. Needle and thread have real dimension and stitches can only be straight, joined together to suggest curves and forms.
 
Digital embroidery lends itself to hard edge geometry as well as biomorphic form.  The combination of high tech with "women's work" provides a delicious contrast of hard/soft, nostalgic/current, objective/non-objective. It also lends itself to modular repetition and re-combinations. Themes can be played out quickly in the computer and then stitched and sampled oh so slowly on the machine; combined with and without mixed media in a wide-ranging exploration of forms in space.   
 
In this chaotic time, digital textiles seem like a way to begin to bring order to the world. Order is, however, always unstable, a glimmer of a hope, cut off by random acts of chance or intent. It is no different in digital embroidery.  In the computer, all things seem orderly, put together, and logical... as though the human propensity for chaos did not exist.  In the production, chance operates: human error, flawed thread, broken needles, run out bobbins, high humidity, low humidity, fabric popping out of hoops and the panicked phone call from a friend.  Repair savvy, canny attention and a spirit of wabi sabi is essential.

RESUME  See complete resume here

Solo Exhibitions
2019            I Dwell in Impossibility, Phipps Gallery, Hudson, WI
                    Eros and Thanatos, Seminole State College, Sandford, FL
​2018            Eros and Thanatos, Artspace Gallery, Richmond, VA                    
​2017            Eros And Thanatos, Wiseman Gallery, Rogue Community                                College, Grants Pass, OR

etc...


Residencies
                        Ragdale Foundation 2007 & 2009, Lake Forest, IL.
Grants
                        Habitat for Humanity 2013, Partners in Arts Participation,                                  MN State Arts Board
                        Jerome Foundation Project Grant for Textile Art, 2014

Collections
                        Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
                        Atlanta College Of Art, Atlanta, GA
                        Ascension Lutheran Church, East Lansing, MI 
                        Banff Center, Banff, Alberta, Canada
                        Baylor University, Waco, TX 
                        Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY
                        Claremont University, Claremont, CA         
                        Curry Collection, South Lyon, MI           
                        Duke University, Durham, NC
                        The Getty Research Institute, CA
                        John M. Flaxman Library, Chicago, IL
                        Michigan State University, E. Lansing, MI
                        Minnesota Center for Book Art, Minneapolis, MN
                        Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, MN
                        National Library, London, GB

                        Newberry Library, Chicago, IL 
                        Otis College, CA 
​                        Pratt Institute of Art, Brooklyn, NY         
                        Ruth And Marvin Sackner Archive Of Concrete And Visual                                Poetry, FL
                        Riddick Collection, Mobile, AL           
                        Ruben Collection, New York, NY
                        Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA
                        Toronto Public Library, Toronto, Canada            
                        University of Colorado, Boulder, CO
                        University Of Washington Library, Seattle, WA
                        University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI
                        Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA
                        Ward Collection, Ann Arbor, MI
                        Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA            
Teaching
                        Emory and Henry College, Emory, VA
                        Chadron State College, Chadron NE
                        Alma College, Alma MI
                        Lansing State Library, Lansing, MI
                        Minnesota Center for Book Arts, MN
                        Hollanders, Ann Arbor, MI
                        Wyrd Sisters, Okemos, MI
                        Art Continuum, Cleveland, OH
                        Habitat for Humanity, St Paul, MN
                        E. Lansing Library, E. Lansing, MI
                        Las Vegas Civic Center
                        Weavers Guild of Minnesota
           
etc...


 

                        Susan Hensel • susanhensel@yahoo.com  
Susan Hensel Art Blog • Susan Hensel Design • Susan Hensel Gallery 
​all work and images  © 2014 Susan Hensel Design, LLC.   
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