Jessie Henson

Chimera (Protection), 2024
24K gold with Beva, acrylic gouache, and polyester and rayon thread on paper

Jessie Henson 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.

Mining the history of embroidery, Henson uses an industrial sewing machine to draw with thread on paper. Henson employs notions of labor and time in her art-making, looking for ways that repetitive actions of daily life accrue and build meaning, while pushing material elements to the threshold of fracture and disintegration.

In her work Chimera (Protection), Henson lays down sheets of gleaming gold leaf and acrylic paint on paper, before covering them with layers of golden embroidery that magnify the optical sparkle of the threaded passages. The tension of the stitches rips the paper, and the gold, despite its association with luxury and polish, becomes the site of a rupture. Sharp hits of pure paint emerge like exclamations from behind the sections of abraded metal. These golden sheets neatly encapsulate the contradictions that Henson explores in her work: fragility coupled with beauty.

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.