Jessie Henson
Untitled, 2020
Polyester and rayon thread on handmade paper
Framed Dimensions:
23 3/8 x 19 x 1 3/4 inches
59.4 x 48.3 x 4.6 cm
Paper Dimensions:
20 x 16 inches
50.8 x 40.6 cm
Jessie Henson
The Sky Catches Fire When the Sun Goes (Jawbone), 2022
13k, 18k, and 24k gold with polyester and rayon thread on paper
Framed Dimensions:
34 7/8 x 26 1/8 x 3 1/2 inches
88.4 x 66.2 x 8.7 cm
Jessie Henson
The Extremes are Distant, 2022
Polyester and rayon thread on paper
72 x 120 inches
182.9 x 304.8 cm
Jessie Henson
The Sky Catches Fire When the Sun Goes (This Much I Believe), 2022
24k gold with polyester and rayon thread on paper
Framed Dimensions:
34 7/8 x 26 1/8 x 3 1/2 inches
88.4 x 66.2 x 8.7 cm
Jessie Henson
The Sky Catches Fire When the Sun Goes (Delirium), 2022
24k gold with polyester and rayon thread on paper
Framed Dimensions:
34 7/8 x 26 1/8 x 3 1/2 inches
88.4 x 66.2 x 8.7 cm
Jessie Henson
Who Will Take on the Unfinished Work of the Dead? I, 2017
Polyester and rayon thread on paper
Framed Dimensions:
34 7/8 x 26 1/8 x 3 1/2 inches
88.4 x 66.4 x 8.7 cm
Paper Dimensions:
30 x 22 1/2 x 2 inches
76.2 x 57.1 x 5.1 cm
Jessie Henson
Untitled, (Blue-Black Thread), 2018
Polyester and rayon thread on paper
Framed Dimensions:
45 1/5 x 33 2/5 inches
114.8 x 84.8 cm
Jessie Henson
The Sky Catches Fire When the Sun Goes (Only This Life), 2022
24k gold with polyester and rayon thread on paper
Framed Dimensions:
34 7/8 x 26 1/8 x 3 1/2 inches
88.4 x 66.2 x 8.7 cm
Jessie Henson
The Sky Catches Fire When the Sun Goes (Wishbone), 2022
24k gold with polyester and rayon thread on paper
Framed Dimensions:
34 7/8 x 26 1/8 x 3 1/2 inches
88.4 x 66.2 x 8.7 cm
Jessie Henson (b. 1977) lives and works in New York, NY and Delhi, NY. Henson received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1999 from the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington D.C. She then received a Master of Fine Arts in 2007 from the School of Mason Gross at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ.
Henson employs notions of labor and time in her artmaking, looking for ways that repetitive actions of daily life accrue and build meaning, while pushing material elements to the threshold of fracture and disintegration. Mining the history of embroidery, Henson uses an industrial sewing machine to draw with thread on paper. As thread accrues, tension begins to overwhelm the paper, warping its surface into furrows and waves that result in undulating, topographical surfaces. Wild bursts of color penetrate the stillness of the paper. The movement of the threaded lines counters the quiet of the surface which bends with pull of the thread’s stitch and is ruptured by the fast-moving needle. Colors serve as the base of different emotional states of mind: pensive, passionate, furtive. The accumulation becomes an act of putting on armor, building up strength. Paradoxically, if the sewing builds up too much, the paper tears apart, laying bare the fragility of the underlying structure.
The resulting sculptural and rendered forms often resemble environments, maps, landscapes, and scientific diagrams of the natural world. Merging the vernaculars of drawing, sculpture, and tapestry, Henson blurs the boundaries between these worlds.
Henson has had solo exhibitions at Bushell Collective, Delhi, NY and A.I.R. Gallery, New York, NY. Recent group exhibitions include Thread Hijack, Hunterdon Museum, Clinton, NJ; Lightning Loom, 208 Gallery, Sea Cliff, NY; Surfaces, Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Poetics of the Afterimage, Dieu Donne Papermill, New York, NY; Line, Bruce Gallery, Edinboro University, Endinboro, PA; The Quiet Show, Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, OR; Commissaries, Foam Corp., Los Angeles, CA; Altered Views: Experiencing the Contemporary Landscape, The Loudon House, Lexington, KY; Studio Mates, Front Room Gallery, New York, NY; Converge 45, Oregon Contemporary, Portland, OR; Micro to Macro, Cuchifritos, New York, NY; Casa De Empena, Anonymous Gallery, Mexico City; reCOVERED, Frosh and Portmann, New York, NY.
Henson has been an artist in residence at the Bronx Museum of Art, New York, NY; Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE; Urban Glass, New York, NY; the Laundromat Project, New York, NY; and Dieu Donne Papermill, New York, NY.
New York-based artist Jessie Henson will make her Broadway debut with "See What the Sun Thinks", an exhibition of new works in Broadway Gallery's Project Room.
Working with an industrial sewing machine and gold leaf on paper, Henson approaches her abstractions with as much muscle as grace. As the tightly nestled and brightly colored thread accretes across the surface in clusters, the paper buckles and contorts adding a sculptural dimension that is echoed by the reflectivity of the metallic leafing.
Henson is a subtly clever colorist as well, at times situating slight tonal variances side by side or leaving considerable swaths of the paper unsewn. A group of works using primarily black thread on black paper reinforce this disciplined aspect of her work, encouraging a totalizing, topographical effect.
Taken together, this body of work serves as a concise introduction to Henson’s practice and her particular inversion of painterly abstraction—one that is refracted through a prism of both craft and industrial manufacture.
