While
Hansen’s
style
evokes
flat
Nintendo
visuals,
it’s her far-reaching scope and curious humor that
make the work resonate. On one quilt, she illustrates
her take on The Three Stooges: pornographer “Larry”
Flynt, Harlem Globetrotter point guard “Curly” Neal,
and
Velvet
Underground
drummer
“Moe”
Tucker. In
another piece, Kanye West, looking ice cold in his grey
808s & Heartbreak suit, stands higher up a mountain than
Sisyphus, who’s pushing his boulder.
Mostly, Hansen says her work reflects what she’s been
thinking about—externalizing her inner dialogue. One recent
project, which she refers to as her “white guilt quilt,” finds
her stitching “great African Americans like Malcolm X, Huey
P. Newton, Aretha Franklin, MLK, the Obamas, and Langston
Hughes,” in response to her own recent meditations on
blackness in America and the country’s history of systemic
racism. (She’s got another celebration of black excellence
devoted to the Harlem Renaissance in the works as well).
“I always have some sort of connection [to the art]—but
sometimes it takes me a couple of years to realize how directly
it relates to my life,” Hansen says. “But it’s fun to get some
distance from a piece and realize, ‘Oh, that’s because I was
feeling this way.’”
She’s well aware of the tonal contrast inherent in her work—
that when the average person thinks of cross-stitching they
imagine grandma’s crafts or “God Bless This Mess” thrift store
art. But Hansen’s work has teeth, and she’s unafraid to explore
violence. Her “head wound” series depicts JFK’s assassination
and Olympic diver Greg Louganis’s 1988 accident at the Seoul
Olympics, tying obliquely into “American pride and its failings.”
Hansen’s work has earned her attention from some big names,
including Chinese revolutionary artist Ai Weiwei, who purchased
her cross-stitch quilt that pairs him with Kentucky settler Daniel
Boone. Sometimes her characters are paired together because
of their shared names—Oscar de la Renta and Oscar De La Hoya;
Buffy Sainte-Marie and Buffy the Vampire Slayer—or for quick
sight gags, like Conan O’Brien’s resemblance to his quiltmate
George Jetson, but Weiwei and Boone shared something deeper,
representing “bravery” and the “wild frontier,” Hansen says.
Her work shares that sense of exploration, examining violence,
celebrity, and shared interconnectivity.
ELSA HANSEN AT HOME WITH HER FIANCÉ, WILL OLDHAM
26
FLOOD
Not bad for a weekend hobby.