BREAKING
ELSA
HANSEN
BY JASON P. WOODBURY
QUILT PHOTOS BY CHRISTIAN HITE HANSEN
PORTRAITS BY TATER BERTAZZONI
BACKSTORY: While studying outdoor recreation in college, artist Elsa Hansen
took to cross-stitching, honing in on an 8-bit, video game–inspired style
rampant with pop culture puns and poignancy
FROM: Louisville, Kentucky
YOU MIGHT KNOW HER FROM: Her design work on HBO’s The Neistat Brothers
and her high-profile cross-stitch quilts—one of which was purchased by
Chinese revolutionary artist Ai Weiwei
NOW: Preparing to show her work in upcoming solo exhibitions and on
ElsaHansen.com
ELSA HANSEN WAS JUST LOOKING FOR SOMETHING TO
DO ON THE WEEKENDS.
So she started cross-stitching to fill the days between her college
courses. Before long, the hobby had completely taken over. She
began making small bookmarks, stitching pop culture figures into
their fabric in the hopes of selling a few by drawing from the worlds
of TV, movies, and music.
Eventually, her creations leapt from in between the pages. “I had so
many [characters] I decided to put them on a quilt,” Hansen says
from her home in Louisville. “I got obsessed with it, failed all my
classes, dropped out of college—[I was] just cross-stitching all of
the time, and I haven’t stopped.”
Her goal of becoming a “park ranger of some kind” unspooled
as Hansen devoted herself to art. She did design work on HBO’s
2010 series The Neistat Brothers, but her chief artistic export is
still her cross-stitch designs, which update the old-timey thread
and needle method with an 8-bit, vintage video- and computergame aesthetic.
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