The Fragility of Beauty

In Scott Andresen's art, the delicate intricacies of silk scrim, a fabric known for its inherent fragility, are transformed into something of immense strength and beauty through his work.

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