INTHEARTS MAGAZINE 2

1. Briefly describe the work you do.
My work centers around fragility, repair, and
slowness. After suffering a severe spinal injury
years ago, I used my recuperation and healing as
the blueprint for my art practice. I developed my
artistic process over a handful of years learning
from experimentation, trial, and failure. In my art
I take very fine, translucent, hand woven Margilan
silk from Uzbekistan, hand-dye it, and then
distress the silk creating holes and tears to be
mended later. I then arrange the silk like a painter
would control a single brushstroke composing an
undulating landscape of fine threads. The silk is
then transferred to a canvas where the rips and
tears in the silk are ready to be mended via hand
embroidery. Decorative patterns are designed
and transferred to the canvas and metallic thread
is used to stitch these patterns in the damaged
areas making the fissures whole again while
celebrating the history of repair rather than
hiding it.
2. What or who inspires your work and
how has that influenced both your work
and your identity as an artist?
I am inspired by makers, craftspeople, and
artisans who preserve cultural artistic traditions,
as well as those that push the same traditions
forward. Artists that devote their time to a
process that is challenging, or labor intensive, but
connects them to the past, while also becoming
conduits of knowledge for others going forward
are always the most inspiring artists I meet.
3. Making Art traditionally carry cultural,
historical, or personal narratives. How
do you incorporate these narratives in
your contemporary pieces?
With an art practice that involves weaving,
mending, embroidery, and decoration, my
artwork lies adjacent to many textile traditions
around the world, and I want to acknowledge
them, I am proud be part of that lineage. Part
of the reason I use abstraction and my own
decorative patterns for embroidery rather than
more specific pictorial elements is because I
don’t want to be seen appropriating from another
culture, while also assuring I leave the final
interpretation of my artworks open for the viewer.
4. Do you aim for a particular
emotional or sensory experience in
audience interaction with your pieces,
considering that textiles or mixed
media artworks can evoke a tactile
response?
I don’t aim for one emotional experience
specifically, but there is a similarity in how
viewers recognize the empathy that is central
to my art. For all the beauty I try to embed in my
work the main inspiration is how to accept and
navigate trauma. You only try to repair that which
is personally valuable to you because mending
something takes much more time and effort
than just replacing it, and there is no assurance
of success. When I talk about my process with
others and share my personal history, trauma,
and the physical and emotional healing I went
through, I will commonly see someone go a
bit quiet and look again, intently, sometimes
with a slight nod or a flash of realization. Those
viewers invariably find a moment to talk to me
privately and they share their own obstacles
and challenges in life that they overcame and
how they did it. Those are the most meaningful
exchanges to me.
5. Given that textiles and mixed media
often generate residuals, how do you
specifically approach sustainability and
work to minimize environmental impact
in your artistic practice?
Since I developed my own artistic practices, I
have greater control over the various elements I
use. I can size the amount of silk needed for each
piece, control the amount of dye to the exact
weight, as well as knowing necessary embroidery
thread required leaving almost no waste during
the creative process.
6. Get inspired!
INSTAGRAM: @scott.andresen
WEBSITE: scott-andresen.com
REPRESENTED BY: Octavia Art Gallery
“Art is about seeing and
feeling the world from a
unique viewpoint, then
taking that unknown and
making it known.”
– Scott Andresen
42 INTHEARTS | WINTER 2024