Susan Hensel

Neotectonic Period 1 : mixed media collage

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, more than twenty garnering awards. In the coming two years, Susan has solo, 2-person, and group exhibitions scheduled in Ellicot, MD; Bloomington, MN; Hopkins, MN; Duluth, MN; and the Garrett Museum of Art, Garrett, Indiana. 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. Her new innovative work that blends commercial embroidery processes with sculptural concerns is gaining attention and awards. Susan’s 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. 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 as an online project promoting Midwest artists with a particular interest in materiality on Artsy.net. Hensel has curated over one hundred exhibitions, and supporting events, of emerging and mid-career artists from all over the United States and Canada.