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Susan Hensel received her BFA from University of Michigan in 1972 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. Recently, Susan had solo and 2-person and group exhibitions in Suwon Museum of Art, S. Korea; Artistry, Bloomington, MN and the Garrett Museum of Art, Garrett, IN as well as solo exhibitions in Leipzig, Germany, Hopkins, MN, Duluth, MN and Springfield, Il. Her upcoming solo exhibitions include the Watermark Art Center, Bemidji, MN and Octagon Center for the Arts, Ames, IA. Her textile artists books are now represented by Stellarhighway in Brooklyn, NY. 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. In recent years Hensel has been awarded multiple grants and residencies through the Jerome Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, Art to Change the World, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, 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. Hensel has curated over one hundred exhibitions, and supporting events, of emerging and mid-career artists from all over the United States and Canada.
Published on April 1st, 2025. Artist responses collected in months previous.
Talk about some of the logistics of your art practice. What systems do you have in place to help streamline your workflows?
My systems have been a bit broken since I broke my leg into 3 pieces in 2022! I am in the process of reorganizing the 3 rooms of my NEW studio to accommodate assistive mobility devices and improve flow. The main room, where most assembly happens has pretty smooth transitions between assembly, photography, inventory, website, promotion. The middle, larger room, needs work to separate fabric storage from wood shop dust! This area is for building armatures, fine woodworking, and bespoke shipping boxes for the textile sculptures. The final room is perfect as the embroidery shop. Two large embroidery machines and a regular sewing machine live and work there with a wall of beautiful colors of thread. In an ideal world, the weekly flow would be 1 day of administrative tasks and the rest hands-on materials. In this real world, I balance the tasks against appointments to regain as close to full mobility as I can! In early 2025 I will start working with a new assistant to help me keep on top of the administrative work and start a big project in regards to my artist legacy.
What is some advice for someone who does not have any experience who would like to pursue a career like yours?
Obviously, keep perfecting your craft. Study everything you can, not only about your craft but also about how the section of the artworld with which you desire to participate works! Keep studying...everything: art history, current events, psychology...whatever interests you. A well rounded person makes a better artist. Don't be afraid! Make art, regardless. Everyone makes "bad" art sometimes. Waste materials! Experiment! Show your work any way you can. The world needs to see it. You will need to develop resilience and determination along the way, but just know that the rejections are not about YOU. They are about the cohesion of the exhibit, the taste of the curator, the gestalt of the current marketplace.
What was the lowest point in your art career and how did you overcome those adversities?
The lowest point really was last year, one year into this protracted recovery from injury. For my bodily safety, I had to move my home and studio away from where I preferred to live and work. My energy was sapped by the constant pain. It ate at my creativity and my hope. For the first time in my career, I wondered if I could remain a productive artist. Did I need to retire? Had I suddenly become TOO OLD to cope? I have always been uncommonly resilient...but this really flattened me. I lined up all the help I could get: coaches and therapists, prayer, meditation, better PT, resumed acupuncture, forced myself to join a chair-zumba class, attended online lectures in my field. It was, and at times continues to be, hard work. You have to grind on through, noting the beliefs and behaviors that do not serve you well and creating situations that do benefit you. You have to show up and do the work, both inside and outside the studio. The creativity has returned and is once again more predictable. I do not need to retire, thank god!
How did you come into the type of artwork you are doing now?
Throughout it all, I continue to work with the ideas of the Neotectonic series, that deals with climate crisis at the intersection of beauty. The media I use are centered around digital embroidery with woodworking and assemblage as needed. I continue to push the sculptural aspects that the embroidery allows, pushing the limits of the machines and the expectations for their use. I stack layer upon layer of color and texture, re-enter the designs with applied paint, wire brushes, plumbing parts, beads, pins and somehow meld them seamlessly into their backings! I carry-on pushing the investigations of materials and their limits, uncovering mystery and meaning.
What was an epiphany in your art practice that took you to the next level?
I don't know if it is exactly an epiphany or a recognition of slumberings skills: I combined my sleeping skills in digital lace, creating new ways to make it so that it will "fall apart" in reasonably predictable ways, creating real evocations of entropy. Digital lace is stitched on sheets of starch that are washed away when stitching is complete. I realized that I could either make art that was 100% thread or I could, within the process, insert areas of felt that would provide color and stability. Geeky and cool revelations! Experimentation and discovery are what I love most about what I do!
Talk about some of the logistics of your art practice. What systems do you have in place to help streamline your workflows?
My systems have been a bit broken since I broke my leg into 3 pieces in 2022! I am in the process of reorganizing the 3 rooms of my NEW studio to accommodate assistive mobility devices and improve flow. The main room, where most assembly happens has pretty smooth transitions between assembly, photography, inventory, website, promotion. The middle, larger room, needs work to separate fabric storage from wood shop dust! This area is for building armatures, fine woodworking, and bespoke shipping boxes for the textile sculptures. The final room is perfect as the embroidery shop. Two large embroidery machines and a regular sewing machine live and work there with a wall of beautiful colors of thread. In an ideal world, the weekly flow would be 1 day of administrative tasks and the rest hands-on materials. In this real world, I balance the tasks against appointments to regain as close to full mobility as I can! In early 2025 I will start working with a new assistant to help me keep on top of the administrative work and start a big project in regards to my artist legacy.
What is some advice for someone who does not have any experience who would like to pursue a career like yours?
Obviously, keep perfecting your craft. Study everything you can, not only about your craft but also about how the section of the artworld with which you desire to participate works! Keep studying...everything: art history, current events, psychology...whatever interests you. A well rounded person makes a better artist. Don't be afraid! Make art, regardless. Everyone makes "bad" art sometimes. Waste materials! Experiment! Show your work any way you can. The world needs to see it. You will need to develop resilience and determination along the way, but just know that the rejections are not about YOU. They are about the cohesion of the exhibit, the taste of the curator, the gestalt of the current marketplace.
What was the lowest point in your art career and how did you overcome those adversities?
The lowest point really was last year, one year into this protracted recovery from injury. For my bodily safety, I had to move my home and studio away from where I preferred to live and work. My energy was sapped by the constant pain. It ate at my creativity and my hope. For the first time in my career, I wondered if I could remain a productive artist. Did I need to retire? Had I suddenly become TOO OLD to cope? I have always been uncommonly resilient...but this really flattened me. I lined up all the help I could get: coaches and therapists, prayer, meditation, better PT, resumed acupuncture, forced myself to join a chair-zumba class, attended online lectures in my field. It was, and at times continues to be, hard work. You have to grind on through, noting the beliefs and behaviors that do not serve you well and creating situations that do benefit you. You have to show up and do the work, both inside and outside the studio. The creativity has returned and is once again more predictable. I do not need to retire, thank god!
How did you come into the type of artwork you are doing now?
Throughout it all, I continue to work with the ideas of the Neotectonic series, that deals with climate crisis at the intersection of beauty. The media I use are centered around digital embroidery with woodworking and assemblage as needed. I continue to push the sculptural aspects that the embroidery allows, pushing the limits of the machines and the expectations for their use. I stack layer upon layer of color and texture, re-enter the designs with applied paint, wire brushes, plumbing parts, beads, pins and somehow meld them seamlessly into their backings! I carry-on pushing the investigations of materials and their limits, uncovering mystery and meaning.
What was an epiphany in your art practice that took you to the next level?
I don't know if it is exactly an epiphany or a recognition of slumberings skills: I combined my sleeping skills in digital lace, creating new ways to make it so that it will "fall apart" in reasonably predictable ways, creating real evocations of entropy. Digital lace is stitched on sheets of starch that are washed away when stitching is complete. I realized that I could either make art that was 100% thread or I could, within the process, insert areas of felt that would provide color and stability. Geeky and cool revelations! Experimentation and discovery are what I love most about what I do!
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