Arthroscopy: the story of the tendons.

This is a post I forgot to complete!  These are small charcoals based on the arthroscopic photos of my shoulder.  The shoulder is now largely healed.  The hand is 100 %, or nearly so.  The bicept remains weakened, but will return to full strength soon.

So now it is fall although really it feels like winter!  Much work awaits me!  In the preceding months, the painful shoulder drawings turned into this beautiful little artists book : Dimezzato e Mettere.  That means broken in half and healed.

Then I made a couple of little garden books, simmering pages with closely wrapped leaves and blooms in a pot of natural dye.  Yes, I simmered paper...sewn to linen and cotton fabric.

I've had shows and travels.  And now I have work to do.  I received a grant to create 2 large textile panels for the new Habitat for Humanity office.  They will be contributed to by clients of Habitat.  I went to see the space today...awesome!


OH, and I had another poem picked up by kaxe radio in the northcountry.  Listen to it here: As An Old Woman Walks

 

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

Beached! a poem

I am excited!

About a month ago I entered 3 poems in a contest sponsored by Lansing City Pulse newspaper and Scene Metrospace Gallery in East Lansing, MI.  One of my poems was selected for an honorable mention!  So excited!  I've never sent a poem out anywhere before! While I cannot be there for the reading, the juror,Stephanie Glazier will read it at (SCENE) Metrospace, 110 Charles St.,E. Lansing, MI  on Wednesday, Nov. 28 at 7 p.m.The event is free and open to the public. The poem Beached was written a few years ago when I spent a week investigating different forms of writing at the Loft Literary Center, here in Minneapolis. Like most of my writing, it is developed from visual and sensual images.  Like most of my work as a visual artist, my writing is very process oriented.  I rarely enter the creative arena knowing exactly what I will produce.  I might have some vague ideas, some faint recurring themes...but until the words (or the charcoal) begin to flow onto the paper, I cannot glimpse my destination. This poem began as a memory of the wind in the wheat on Prince Edward Island.