Feast of Famine? It's newsletter time!

http:// www.susanhenselprojects.com

I DWELL IN IMPOSSIBILITY

October 25-December 1, 2019

The Phipps Center for the Arts

109 Locust St.

Hudson, WI

Gallery Hours daily 9am-4:30 pm (Sunday noon-4:30 pm)

IT'S A CELEBRATION! COME JOIN ME! MEET MY SON JOHN, THE

PHOTOGRAPHER!

The opening reception and celebration is Friday, October 25, 6:30-8:30pm

Put it on your calendar!

I am so pleased to share this with you. The collaborative suite of photographs, I DWELL IN IMPOSSIBILITY, that my son John and I worked on, is about to be exhibited in its entirety for the second time on roughly five years, and he is flying in from Boston to be at the opening!

John is a powerful artist and thinker in his own right. We have collaborated before

and would more often,I suspect, if Boston weren't so far away! The idea for this

began many years ago while I was at a residency in Illinois. I wondered what it meant

when a woman wore a "power suit." Time passed, I aged and I wondered what would

it mean if a grey-haired woman, with a "pregnant belly" wore a "power suit?"

As luck would have it, I had shoulder surgery and John flew out to check up on me.

We talked some more about the idea. He costumed me, I took my drugs and he

directed me. The photoshoot brought out all kinds of dissonances concerning age,

gender and power.

It has been a very successful group of artworks. Portions of this suite have been

exhibited all across the country.

Do come and meet him and say "HI" to me as well.

The reception and celebration is Friday, October 25, 6:30-8:30pm

_____________________________________

In Other News

Feast or famine; Flood or drought.

That is the way of the art world. You send out failing proposals, rejection after

rejection seemingly forever. And then the dam breaks and you are overwhelmed with

opportunities for exhibition. The studio is at "flood stage" right now!

TORUS INTERIOR is being exhibited at

the Art League of Rhode Island, in One-Zero-One

HEATWAVE is on exhibit at the

Farmington Museum, in Farmington New Mexico

CASCADE is on exhibit at the St. Louis Art

Guild, as part of the Surface Design Association shows.

HORIZON is featured in the Surface

Design Association Journal

SKEWED GEOMETRY is at Webster

University as part of the Surface Design Association festivities.

And, by the time you see me again, I will be a "Certified Ricoma Technician." But,

please, do not try to hire me! I am taking an intensive course on maintaining and

repairing my new commercial embroidery machine!

Hope to see you soon.

I

IN THE WINDOWS- ART QUILTS

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I have known Gwen for over 40 years.  She and I were roommates late in our college years.  She got a degree in Interior Design while I got mine in Fine Arts. She went on to a varied career including institutional interior design and, ultimately, library science.  In the last few years she has returned to her first love: color.  Using the skills of quiltmaking, she investigates how color and form influence each other.

2018-2019 Art Quilts

By

Gwen Schagrin

These works were inspired by a variety of situations: a guild challenge, workshops with art quilting gurus, techniques in books that I wanted to try, improvisational reworking of patterns combined with a new approach to three dimensions, and scrap piecing.

As always, I am motivated to create and explore by improvisationally manipulating color, form, composition, and balance.

The teaching and works of Rayna Gillman, Pam Beal, Jean Wells, and Cindy Grisdela have inspired and guided me.

IN the Windows, December 2013

I have always had some problems managing calendars.  I get lost in the days of the week, the months and their corresponding number systems.  For the most part I do get to all my appointments on the right day and at the right time.  But there are glitches.  December is such a month, a glitch month.  I created an unintentional hole in the window schedule.  So, at the last minute, I had to fill the windows.  So this month the work in the windows is mine.

 

These deconstructed suits are part of a series that keeps me thinking and re-working, over and over.

 
I keep returning to them, adding pins, skeletal structures of thread.  I ponder the deconstruction of a symbol of power.

Deconstructing Power

One of the many things that women share world wide is wage disparity with men.  In the US, the average gender wage gap, is 23%.  When considering the wages of CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies, the gap narrows to 17%, but the number of women holding the position also reduces.  Women are roughly 51% of the population in  the US, holding 4.2% of the top positions in Fortune 500 companies.

What is it, then, that represents this overwhelming male power?  Perhaps it is the suit.

Deconstructing Power is a series of stitched assemblages that consider the artificiality of the power suit, designed to enhance male images of power. Developed out of European styles of the aristocracy, the power suit, once established, changed little and now is the near ubiquitous symbol of power for the urban male.  The deconstructed suits are stitched onto floral/feminine upholstery fabrics with their artifice prominent. Once splayed open, they become simply the stuff of which they are made: cleverly woven textiles cleverly assembled for effect, often by the hands of women.