Michael T. Hensley | Pile-O-smiles

Exhibition Dates: June 17 - July 29, 2023

Sandler Hudson Gallery is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition, Pile-O-Smiles by Portland, Oregon artist, Michael T. Hensley. Hensley will exhibit mixed-media works on canvas and panel. These works, mostly autobiographical, reveal much about the subconscious as well as the outside world. Heavily textured and layered, they center on the practice of mark-making. 

The artist employs various mediums including: house paint, spray paint, pencil, collage, crayon, and paint pens. The paint is applied with house painting tools: rags, brushes, and random sharp objects. The surfaces are dense, colorful, and packed with hidden imagery steeped in a graffiti tradition.  

As the world shut down in 2020, Hensley began to question the worthiness of art. With the onslaught of Covid and all that came with it, making art seemed frivolous and somewhat irresponsible. Hensley found himself working in fits and starts. Despite his reluctance to create, a provocative body of work emerged. 

MICHAEL T. HENSLEY was born in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1967 and currently lives and works in Portland, Oregon. He studied sculpture and drawing at the Bronze Craft Foundry in Charlottesville before studying at the Pacific Northwest College of Art and receiving a BA from Portland State University in 1998. His work is included in the public collections of the City of Seattle, City of Portland, the Modera Hotel, and Oregon Health and Sciences University. Twitter also has a piece in its corporate collection. He has also completed numerous public commissions in Portland for Outside/In, and Tri-Met. He is currently represented by Sandler Hudson Gallery, Atlanta GA, Costello Childs Contemporary Art in Scottsdale AZ, and William Havu Gallery Denver CO.