Jessie Henson

Exploring the history of embroidery, Jessie Henson employs an industrial sewing machine to create intricate thread drawings on paper.

Biography of Jessie Henson

Jessie Henson was born in 1977. She earned a BFA in 1999 from the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington D.C. Following this, she pursued and obtained an MFA in 2007 from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ.

Henson has participated in several prestigious artist residency programs, including those at the Bronx Museum of Art in New York, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, UrbanGlass in New York, The Laundromat Project in New York, and Dieu Donné Papermill in New York. Each of these residencies has provided her with unique opportunities to develop her craft, engage with diverse artistic communities, and expand her creative horizons.

The artist has exhibited her works widely with solo exhibitions held at Bushell Collective and A.I.R. Gallery. Additionally, Jessie Henson's works have been featured in numerous group shows held at various galleries, including 208 Gallery in Sea Cliff, Nino Mier Gallery in Los Angeles, Elizabeth Leach Gallery in Portland, and Room Gallery in New York, among others.

Currently, the artist lives and works in New York, NY and Delhi, NY.

Jessie Henson's Art Style

Henson incorporates themes of labor and time into her art, exploring how the repetitive actions of daily life accumulate and create meaning. She pushes materials to the brink of fracture and disintegration. Drawing inspiration from the history of embroidery, Henson uses an industrial sewing machine to create thread drawings on paper. As the thread accumulates, the tension distorts the paper, transforming its surface into furrows and waves resulting in undulating, topographical landscapes. Vivid bursts of color punctuate the stillness of the paper, adding dynamic energy to her work.

The movement of the threaded lines contrasts with the stillness of the paper surface, which bends under the pull of the stitches and is punctured by the rapid motion of the needle. Colors act as the foundation for various emotional states: pensive, passionate, furtive. The accumulation of thread becomes a metaphor for donning armor and building strength. Paradoxically, if the sewing becomes too dense, the paper tears, revealing the fragility of its underlying structure.

The resulting sculptural and rendered forms often evoke environments, maps, landscapes, and scientific diagrams of the natural world. By merging the languages of drawing, sculpture, and tapestry, Henson blurs the boundaries between these disciplines.