3441 Cedar Ave. S
Minneapolis, MN 55407
phone/fax 612 722-2324
susan@susanhenseldesign.com
www.susanhenseldesign.com
SUSAN HENSEL
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Susan Hensel Design
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War Chest Series
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This award winning series hatched full blown in the summer of 1997. While certainly these works express a continuing concern with the issues of war, they are more raw and confrontational than anti-war work from the past. While technically these are assemblages, they seem like books to me. They were conceived as book structures, having covers, spines and interiors that must be accessed by the viewer, one section at a time.
I had been studying the holocaust for the better part of a year for a major unique bookwork that I would finish by 1998. I approached my holocaust study in much the same way as I begin the research for the literary sculptures. I read the truly great literature of the holocaust, not the historians. I read Delbo, Weisel, Speigelman, the text of Shoah, and others. I have always found that poetry and literature gets to the point much more swiftly and accurately. Perhaps the historians can help us understand why these holocausts happen. Until that magical time when we can say without doubt, " This is why and now it will never happen again", it behooves us a moral beings to do all we can do to prevent the carnage.
So this is what I can do...art work that screams.
The Warchest Series is one complete work of art. While sections of it are shown from time to time and a couple of them are already in collections, the remainder is intended to be sold as a unit. The cost for the work is $1200
These items are unique and therefore shipping costs will vary depending on destination. Please write for details.
WAR CHEST
The piece that originated the series, lost long ago somewhere in the South! Women's war work, at its most innocent.
WAR CHEST: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST
From World War I to the present, as always, the technology makes it so much easier to kill. Will our children finally learn the lesson?
WAR CHEST: VICTORY WORK
Our own propaganda exhorted people to do valuable work for a "just war". Yet we must pensively acknowledge the people who died as a result .
WAR CHEST : DEFEND AND JUSTIFY
We are masters of our own mythology, preaching truths that are based on fear and dread. During WWI General Smuts gave a series of speeches, some rather wonderful, but many based on the premise of the manifest destiny of white, British citizens and the moral and ethical obligations of the white races to introduce civilization to those of color, while maintaining white rule and racial separateness.
WAR CHEST: THE FINAL SOLUTION
How can one look at a child and see evil? Lest we never forget. SOLD
WAR CHEST:THE PEACEMAKER
Great gobs of money spent on destruction to keep peace. It has always been so, and it has always failed. Must it always be so? assemblage.
WAR CHEST : PATTON'S HAND a brilliant soldier whose unique fingerprint was placed on history. Yet, even "just wars" are evil. assemblage/ artists book from found objects.
WAR CHEST:ON THE BEACH
Wars are fought with rifles and words. Both Kill. In the end, either way brings death.
WAR CHEST: RACIAL PURITY
The most chilling image I have come across from the Death Camps was that of a child's confiscated doll. That doll would be traded for an onion, for life itself.
WAR CHEST: AFTERNOON
Musings on the Mexican Revolution and tropical D.H. Lawrence nights. Still perplexed by war.