Born in the 80’s, Henderson has lived two distinct lives. Her childhood and high school years were, for the most part, pre-internet. The iPhone was introduced in 2007 as she graduated college; heavily tethering the second half of her life to a smartphone and social media. Henderson has a lot of questions about the ways these tools and devices have formed/are forming her as she finds herself continuously navigating the tensions that they seem to create. The smartphone certainly provides many benefits, but it also entices one to consume, placate discomfort with distraction, and resist the limitations of time and space. These activities often feel in direct competition with the deeper and more complicated longings of her soul— to contribute to the world through thoughtful creation, attentiveness, and lean into the limitations of embodiment. With the ever-increasing pace of technological advancement, it is essential that we critically evaluate how personhood is continually shaped and re-shaped by the adoption of each new tool and device.
Henderson works through these questions and tensions in her artmaking practice. Viewing her computer and phone as a digital archeological dig-site of sorts, these repositories are culled for photos, screenshots, texts and other source imagery that become autobiographical evidence and documentation of everyday life. Through abstracting, combining, documenting, distorting, re-processing, duplicating, and recombining these elements a visual language emerges that mirrors the endlessly regenerating behavior of technology itself. The work is primarily two-dimensional; utilizing digital and handmade processes like vinyl cutting, CNC routing, digital printing and screen printing in ways that are densely layered. Sparkly, metallic, reflective, slick surfaces are punctuated with dimensional interruptions, distortions and handmade marks that embody analog/digital tensions.
October 2024
Wheaton, Illinois
Look, Look, There is Something
Multi-dimensional installation spanning two walls: 15.5’ and 19’ long by 12’ high. Vinyl decals, custom-printed fabric, iron-on decals, upholstry foam, plywood, nature treasures.
Muchness & Manyness; Being Lived Elsewhere; We will Never Be Bored Again; A Foot in Several Worlds; A Very Deep Encounter
Printed fabric, iron-on decals, MDF, polyfill
25.5”x35.5”
A Phone, A Rock, A Tool, A Toy
Interactive collaborative project; blank CNC routed MDF “phones” decorated by friends and exhibition visitors
120+ phones; 3” x 6”
Alive & Clicking; Can’t Decide if I Like This; Couldn’t Load Image; Now What?
Letterpress prints, digital prints, vinyl decals
18”x24”
Finish This?; How Many Hours; This World is Not Real Life; Unsure Face; SO REALLLLL
Digital prints, vinyl decals
18” x 24”
“Because our present habit of mind is governed by the calculus of consumerism and busyness, we are less frequently available to the exuberance of beauty.” - John O’Donohue, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace
“Yet one of the hallmarks of the Great Rewiring is that children and adolescents now spend far less time outside, and when they are outside, they are often looking at or thinking about their phones. If they encounter something beautiful, such as sunlight reflected on water, or cherry blossoms wafting on gentle spring breezes, their first instinct is to take a photograph or video, perhaps to post somewhere. Few are open to losing themselves in the moment…” - Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation
Spring 2024
This book is an extension of the Deeply Placed Exhibition that took place at Samford University in February 2024 and was made possible thanks to a grant from Alabama State Council on the Arts. It includes essays considering what it means to be deeply placed in an ever-shifting world through a variety of interdisciplinary lenses.
Essays and visual content by Karen Brummund, Jennifer Allen Craft, Lauren Frances Evans, Jessica Henderson, Brett Levine, Jared Margulies, Elisabeth Pellathy, Claire Thompson, and Felicia Wu Song.
Spring 2024
View the complete project and learn more about History-Papers at lexthompson.com
Winter 2024
Birmingham, Alabama
- Friday, Jan. 26 at 9:15 a.m. - Seminar in the Art Gallery with guest theologian, Dr. Jennifer Allen Craft - Exploring the Tensions of Place Through Theology and the Arts
- Thursday, Feb. 15 at 1 p.m. - Seminar in the Art Gallery with guest sociologist, Dr. Felicia Wu Song - Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age
Summer 2023
25 x 19
1 2 Song. Felicia Wu. Restless Decices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age. IVP Academic, an Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2021.
3 Comer, John Mark. The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. Waterbrook, 2019.