EROS AND THANATOS is traveling to Richmond, VA

Next year it travels to Florida!

TIMELINES and DUE DATES

Setting timelines and dues dates from internal cues is today's topic.  It is hard enough to pay attention to the external cues: Grant due dates; school assignments; application dates.  Lots of people have a hard time completing things well and on time.

Even harder is setting your own dues dates. SO here are some dates I am setting for myself...which I am already questioning. Feel free to hold me accountable!


7/8/16 send in Chenven grant application I did this yesterday!

7/15/16 Identify 5 university galleries accepting proposals I sent one yesterday!

8/1/16 send a direct fundraising letter for completion of (Her)Suit.  I think I can do this.

(Her)Suit getting photographed

8/1/16 send gallery/museum proposals(as appropriate) or introduction to my work.
Don't know about this one.  Might not be ready, even though summer is the best time to send. I am not finding the right fit.  So, while not giving up on this one, it is back to the drawing board as far as timing goes. More research is needed.

9/1/16 secure temporary space to hang (Her)Suit and document it.
           look on Craigslist
           ask for referrals on social media forums
           line up photographers, videographers

9/30/16 Be ready to run a crowdfunding campaign on Hatchfund or Indegogo to upgrade studio equipment. I think I can do this.

Eros and Thanatos

10/31/16 Complete Eros and Thanatos 
I have to do this.  I was thinking of balling it up and throwing it out, but I got a solo show for it and other parts of the body of work for March 2017.

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Life and Death in the New Year

It has been a while since I blogged about my own work. Certainly I have been posting pictures on Facebook...a substitute for the words?  Maybe.

The new year has begun and I am about to go into high gear!  or, higher gear than my already kind of obsessive work practice. I continue my year long commitment to the vulvar/shell form.  The theme remains Eros and Thanatos.  Eros, while certainly the root of the word erotic, also refers to the living body.  SO, the theme is life and death!  Well, actually, it is the always aging,  sensual, sensate body on the journey toward death, composting and eternity.  It has something to do with living in the moment, rather than clutching the past or fearing the future.  It has something to do with finding the luminous, numinous, liminal moment when the body ceases to restrict and the spirit soars free. There is breath and ritual and movement...and in some iterations, transgression and humor.

I began the work in the  Women's Art Institute at St. Kate's last summer.  I am about to continue working on this installation.  It will require at least 160 drawings done on 22 x30" Stonehenge, coated with chalkboard paint. My home studio is not large enough to hang four rows of 10 drawings each,  much less four walls of drawings. So, as I have done in the past when circumstances required, I have sublet a studio in the Grainbelt Building in order to work on this installation.
I am excited and nervous about starting up again!

Meanwhile, on other fronts, all kinds of things are percolating.  My friend Dale and I are framing the (Her)suit project so that the installation can finally find exhibition spaces!  The frames are huge and it is a kind of scary undertaking.  I am working on spec, as I always do, but on a larger scale that I am used to.

The frames are taller than I, the images are triptychs meant to be hung from the ceiling in rows, images back-to-back.
The images may be familiar to some of you who have been following for a long time.  They were begun in a residency at the Ragdale Foundation in 2009!

I have also been ordering fabric samples from a couple of fabric printers, designed to sew a matching suit jacket.

On yet another front, Danielle, my current administrative assistant, and I are continuing to work on the Art of Giving Project.  We have organized and sent out packets to collections who hold my artists books, offering to donate titles to expand the collection. Last year I placed many titles with Minnesota Center for Book Arts and with University of Colorado at Boulder.  It is time to place more in other collections.  And now we move on to the question of the archives associated with this project and with other aspects of my art history.  Ten years ago, I never would have thought of this. I have been saving things: press clippings, templates, edition notes, slides, journals, notebooks, postcards and posters of exhibitions...They are protected from moisture and sun, but in no way are they organized!  Much work ahead!
There is more, but this is enough for now!  Happy New Year!

Changes in the Studio and new shows ahead

They say a rolling stone gathers no moss, the more things change the more they remain the same...etc. There are probably a few more cliches, if I could just think of them.  I am on my own again in the studio, i.e. back to normal. 

My wonderful, wonderful assistant, Melissa, decided to simplify her life a bit.  She was juggling so many balls that I knew our time together in the studio was going to coming to an end sooner, rather than later.  With her help, I re-launched my exhibition career.  REALLY!  I felt like an utter amateur when I returned to the studio to determine what I had been doing all those years the gallery was open!  She helped me discover what I had, think clearly about it, re-write many documents and organize my desktop for applying to shows.  Wow!  I could not be more grateful.  Please support her in her endeavors  with her gallery Flow Art Space.

I have been working away on the Jerome Fiber Project Grant...see The Wearing My Age Blog.  In the background I hear the embroidery machine stitching away.  As a result of the learning process for the Wearing My Age Project, I embroidered a series of hankies with selfies!  I just sent 3 of them off to Seattle, to Columbia City Gallery.  You can see one of them in the poster;-)  Seattle is one of my favorite cities in the world.  If you are out there in the next month and a half, check out the show!

The Ophelia Project comes down from Riverland Community College soon...Marcus and I drive down September 25 to pack it up and put it in storage for a few months.

Upcoming shows are a bit more local:

I Dwell in Impossibility opens as part of a two person show at Larson Gallery U of MN Nov. 7( opening) - Dec. 4Wearing My Age opens as part of the Jerome show, Truth Telling atConcordia College Jerome fiber artists Nov. 13 (opening) - Jan. 3

I am only 3 inches taller than these frames

It's not so much that I am short, although I am that.  I top out at 60 inches in height, give or take a decimal or two.  But these frames top out at 57 inches.

Heavy duty framing!  And I mean HEAVY. These things weigh a ton.  But it is so good to see them framed!

These are part of the His Suit, Hirsute, Power Suit project for which I continue to seek funding.  In addition to these singular pieces, there are triptychs that were developed to be the surface of three dimensional objects that will loom at the center of an installation.  So, I am now beginning to frame the parts that are framable while I await grant results and seek yet more funding sources.

On another note...

In the lull, awaiting answers from the Habitat people... I have been working on other things.

I am confidant  that sometime in the next year I will get to exhibit the Ophelia Project, and installation and performance.  I brought in the pink rattan furniture from the garage and built in the DVD player that will play "Gentleman Prefer Blonds."  I LOVE building stuff!

When I was designing the Habitat Scrapbook, I also designed the book for "I Dwell in Possibility."

This is a project my son and I collaborated on.  I was just post surgery and pretty out of it when we did the shoot.  I love the outcome!

It is a 12 image suite of prints.  The first 2 images are at the printer  and I really look forward to getting them!  But, good grief!  Look what I did on the cover!!!!  I typo-ed our names!  On 2 copies, no less!
Oh well, the books were not being sent out anywhere.  I will order again, with the "L's"  in the right place.

Ophelia's Dream

I just got word to day that one of my poems was selected to be read on Northern Community Radio, kaxe.org.  SO PLEASED!  Not only am I "coming clean" about writing poetry, this poem is part of a much larger project I have written about and illustrated in the past.  

The Ophelia Project, an installation and performance I have been working on for several years, is the location for this poem.  There are many other mixed media/drawings,  more poems and other tech media that will be part of the event.  I expect the event to be ready in the fall of 2013.  The picture above is the first to be highlighted in the performance, introducing the character named Ophelia.  This is her poem, "written" perhaps at a later stage in her life.

Listen to Susan Hensel read the poem Ophelia's Dream

A new quest has begun...

 
The studio is as chaotic as it usually is these days.  I am framing, wrapping, storing, moving among contractors as the re-modeling comes near to a close. Transition is still the the word of the day.

Amid it all, I applied for a grant, but did not win it.  So be it.  I carry on.  My goal remains.  It is to make another oversized dress (ultimately more than one) from unbleached muslin, with a small bodice, overly long noodle-sleeves.  The bodice and sleeves will be heavily embroidered with lace images. The skirt(s) of the dress(es) will tell the story.

Fashioning narrative: engendered stories

It all began with old, worn white dresses.

The dresses hover like ghosts, ethereal, whispering in the registers just beyond hearing; flitting about in that peripheral place just beyond the corner of your eye.

I am interested in the narratives revealed by clothing: the power of clothing to tell a story, to support a myth or to define a role. My goal is to tell new stories making manifest internalized meanings implicit in fashion and to reassess traditional understandings of gender roles.

I have collected nightgowns, baptismal dresses, children’s clothing from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and I have sewn giant muslin dresses. They function as carriers of stories, individually and in groups. They are stiffened, suspended and animated to music, glued, painted and pinned onto canvas, and some are filled with light and sound They seem naïve, misguided, innocent, nostalgic, tragic, living in a dream world.

Each represents a costume donned by an individual enmeshed in a culture that attempted to define them or confine them to stable definitions of gender and class. Women’s history is tied up with fashion, their stories often hidden. Here, they are made visible.

Ophelia rises like a phoenix

The frames were a long time coming...back ordered.  But the 8 ply museum matts were cut and shipped in a flash.  All ten are matted, glazed and framed. They are awaiting their wire hardware and picture lights now.  Whew!

They look so different framed.  The colors are richer; the focus seems sharper.  Go figure. Soon they will be safely stored, awaiting their time in  the sun.  The installation and performance is probably going to be summer or fall 2013.

Gideon blends in

Gideon has become part of the sculpture!

petticoats,underskirts and anemones

While soaking up the Christmas season, I spun many more anemones. They are building up the reef under the sea dress. Petticoats and underskirts are appearing...unbleached muslin cheesecloth is experimentally draped in the openings. I think, when more energy returns, more lights will appear as well. It is always slow going in "intuitive land", where language has little to add to the equations. It is all about materials and light and growth.

I've had "help" in the studio

I've had "help" in the studio the last couple of weeks: Gideon! He came to live with me just before Christmas.As usual, I need to draw as I work on sculpture.s. The drawing s are huge( 7 feet?) and lively. They have a bit of unbleached muslin cheesecloth completing them. They may have yarn in the end as well. We shall see.

Sea dress continues

I am more or less diligently spinning more anemones...more or less. I am experimenting with lifting the skirt, revealing the interior.

I am struggling with how long and what shape to make the panels of the dress. Do they simply need to be longer so they can wrap more fully and easily around the anemones? Do they need to be longer and shaped , turning them into trains like on a wedding dress?

More thoughts

So I straightened the bodice and turned off the studio lights. The bodice w ill be stuffed somehow. But the question is, can this piece operate as the center piece for a show I am calling Burnt Memories? I would need to distress the materials to make them "match."

A little bit of light shed on the subject

So, as I have been awaiting time to go to the Amtrak station to pick up my son for Christmas, I have been playing with lights and props. I up ended a clear tub in the middle, placed a glass block on top. over that I draped a net of lights. Covered that w/ silk organza and then stacked in the anemones. A single rope light dangles. No decisions yet...but I am thinking that extensions of the muslin tails and lots more anemones to nearly fill the room. Probably more lights...not enough glow through the anemones. Perhaps they will need to be infiltrated. Hmmm.

What do you think?

I am cross posting with Sue's Luxury Fiber blog...the content crosses over. I am actively exploring, again, the ability of yarn to carry the "burden" of fine art. These yarns are spun unbelievably large..barely useful. Each strand of the largest are larger than my index finger. Perhaps I will pose them elsewhere...or maybe I'll continue this project at the Walker Art Center Open Field Spin-In on July 10.

Anemone-Yarn installation

I have been spinning on the Country Spinner HUGE hanks of yarn that , when plopped (that's a technical term), take on the character of Anemones. This first photo is a lighting anomaly...the yarn is NOT orange. I think my hand was partially blocking the flash! But it is a cool photo. I then arranged them across the floor. I like the difference in size of the strands...from super-bulky to Ginormous Bulky( another technical term).

Then I covered them with silk organza net. Then I placed a net of lights beneath them. I LOVE HOW THIS LOOKS! I think I will continue working with this.

Now I wonder how they would look in the garden?