Stretched Thin:
Visual Musings on Tension by Stina Joy Henslee
February 22 – June 8, 2025
Overview
We live in a world of flux. There’s a timorous buzz in the air,” artist Stina Joy Henslee writes. “COVID-19, the Trump era, the Internet age with its constant feeds of information, civil unrest, protests around racial injustice, rising rates of anxiety and panic among youth . . . We do our best to cope and block out the noise—in both healthy and not so healthy ways.”
Henslee’s exhibition, Stretched Thin, represents a healthy way of coping with our current age of anxiety, an artist’s response to unsettled times. In 10 paintings using a variety of materials, she explores visual manifestations of both tension and its relief, excavating and exposing the undercurrent of apprehension in our everyday lives. The figures in her paintings are precariously balanced— on tightropes, under water, in yoga poses, on suspension bridges—with straining muscles, clenched jaws, and a palpable sense of disquiet appropriate to our time.
But Henslee’s work in Stretched Thin is not entirely bleak. Amidst her riotous figures and scenes of instability, viewers can find symbols of peace, humor, and ease: laughter and smiles, dancing, fluidity, weightlessness. These juxtapositions give the work a sense of narrative and development—as well as a sense of hope.
“I hope this exhibition will foster a sense of connection,” Henslee said, “and encourage shared dialogue about personal experiences of tension and release.” Messages of community and persistence emerge from what would appear, in Stinslee’s paintings, to be intractable situations. In these threads of optimism, the artist offers a reminder that even the darkest setting contains light.
Artist Statement
The mixed media art that I create combines darkly humorous and playful imagery with visceral, at times violent, realities. Art for me is about healing, and while personal and vulnerable in nature, I hope that my work resonates with the public and fosters understanding. The human experience is filled with great joy and great trauma and art should reflect that. My work is steeped in emotion, but makes use of kitschy elements as a contrast to the seriousness; because what is life without humor? The artistic approach I take is an ‘any means possible’ attitude when it comes to the medium I use. Spray paint, acrylic, ink, jelly pen, string, collage, watercolor and stencil are all incorporated, as are juxtapositions of tight line work and expressive painterly strokes. My work is typically thematic in nature, but ties together through personal symbolic imagery that I have developed over time. Past concepts I have worked with include religious trauma, disordered eating, suburban malaise and how humans negatively affect the animal world. My current body of work is a curated collection of visual representations of tension. I am looking forward to sharing it with the world.
Biography
Stina Joy Henslee is a mixed media artist and graphic designer, who relocated to
Dubuque, Iowa in 2020 from her hometown of Chicago. At the age of two, she decided she wanted to be an artist and spent her formative years obsessively drawing the Pegasus and other equine forms. In 1999 she spent a year in Helsinki attending a fine arts high school and then continued her arts education at Washington University in St. Louis where she studied Printmaking, German and Art History. Post graduation she lived in Berlin, where she found out she is not cool.
Since then, she has worked as a graphic designer, primarily in book and catalog design. Recently she has had a solo at Clarke University Quigley Gallery and created multiple murals for 7Hills Brewery and Voices Art Gallery. Her art was featured on billboards for the 2021 Dubuque Museum of Art Biennial, where she received an honorable mention. She has also shown at several Chicago galleries including; Heaven Gallery, Ugly Step Sister, Ampersand, Gallery Studio Oh!, Motherland, Scheme Gallery, and Drive Thru Gallery. Her time is currently split appeasing an extremely emotional parrot, attempting to make a living in the arts, and taking advantage of the beautiful nature in the Driftless area.
Selected Works From the Exhibition
Views From the Exhibition Gallery
