Margo Mensing, an interdisciplinary artist, poet, professor of fiber arts at Skidmore College, devoted mother, grandmother and beloved friend to many, died of natural causes the morning of August 28th at the age of 83. The significant condition contributing to her death was cognitive failure resulting from hydrocephalus.
Margo was best known for organizing and creating multimedia art projects that forged alliances with artists and scientists around a grand theme often based on the biographies of significant historic figures. Most notable examples of Margo’s choreography and collaborative spirit are her installation “A Very Liquid Heaven” at the Tang Teaching Museum and the “Stoptime Louis Armstrong Festival” in Congress Park, Saratoga Springs NY.
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Margo was born on October 4th, 1941 in Chicago, Illinois to Hazel and Paul Mensing. Her family moved from Chicago to Detroit, Michigan where Margo graduated from Birmingham High School in 1959. Margo was a member of the Aquabelles, a synchronized swimming team and the Scribblers’ Club, devoted to reading and criticizing the members’ writing. Margo had a close friendship with her younger brother, Jimmy. Margo graduated from the University of Michigan in 1963 with a Bachelor of Arts in English and the University of Michigan History Department with a Master’s in American History in 1969.
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Margo married Dennis Shermeta in August 1963 at the First Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, MI. Margo taught American History at the high school level as Dennis completed medical school at the University of Michigan. In 1968, their first son Nicholas (Nick) was born, followed by the birth of their second son, Benjamin James (J) in 1970. Margo moved to Baltimore, Maryland with her family where she explored her interest in textiles and natural dyes by opening a business with her friend Judi Bird called Dyed in the Wool. Margo’s home studio filled with looms and large vats of goldenrod dyes collected on nature walks, the walls covered with handwritten poems.
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In 1980, the family moved to Chicago where Dennis began a new position as Chair of the Pediatric Surgery Department at the University of Chicago. Margo began to build outdoor site art installations with natural materials grown in her garden at their ranch style home on the shores of Lake Michigan. Intrigued by women’s historic role as homemaker and the possibilities of expression in domestic life, Margo began merging her sewing, embroidery, and quilting skills with her love for words and poetry in objects that told short narratives about a woman’s experience. Some of her first studio pieces--such as “The Crux of the Matter”, a quilt about cracks in her marriage and “A Clean Conscience”, white cotton hand towels about trust and fidelity--Margo created in a studio on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue. In 1985, at the age of 44 with two boys in high school, Margo enrolled in the Master of Fine Arts program at the Art Institute of Chicago. Margo thrived in the learning environment, reading and writing art criticism, and advancing her studio practice surrounded by the energy and innovations of other fiber artists.
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Following the completion of her MFA degree, Margo taught fiber arts at the Art Institute of Chicago and wrote about emerging artists whose work occupied the intersection between art and craft. A New York artist, John McQueen came to the Art Institute to give a workshop on basketmaking, and Margo and John began a friendship that endured to the end of her life. Traveling from her Michigan home to Chicago and to a local community college, Margo’s career as a beloved instructor in the construction and transformation of textiles began.
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In 1992, Margo and Dennis divorced and after a short time teaching at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Margo moved to Saratoga Springs NY to become a fiber arts professor at Skidmore College. John joined Margo and the two began their life together, traveling to distant lands, recording their adventures in shared journals, making art pieces and gallery shows together, reading poetry, writing poetry, making words sing, clink, rhyme, and come alive in objects and the world we inhabit. The two adored each other with the giddy joy of first-time lovers and the mature gravitas felt when you know you are with your forever love.
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Margo thrived in the classroom at Skidmore, as an engaging and dedicated teacher, inspiring and challenging her students to ask broad questions about the role of art in society. Often students experimented with materials that crossed over the assumed boundaries of fine arts. Margo’s work as an artist also flourished. In 2004, Margo planned and created a multimedia art installation and performance in collaboration with astrophysics professor Mary Crone Odekon, curator Ian Berry, and dance choreographer Debra Fernandez at the Tang Teaching Museum. “A Very Liquid Heaven” was an art event + exhibit that included a musical performance “MAK3”, with Skidmore College President David Porter on piano, interviews of astronomers such as Edwin Hubble and Henrietta Leavitt played by James Stanley and Jesse Hawley, and drawings and sculptures by Russell Crotty and Kiki Smith. The gallery show included manuscripts of Galileo and “Henrietta’s Stars”-105 glass plate negatives, images of the universe that provided the scientific evidence for Hubble’s theory of an expanding universe. The project and culminating event, like Margo, seemed to effortlessly contain multitudes and presented the viewer with a rich intersection of the search for scientific, empirical truths alongside the improvised strategies of artists and designers to bring order and beauty to this apparent chaos. In the words of the Tang Museum Director, John Weber, “A Very Liquid Heaven was a labor of love and invention, enjoyed by thousands of visitors over the course of its run at the Tang.”
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Perhaps Margo’s magnum opus was her Dead at series. Each year beginning on her birthday, October 4, Margo created a presentation, or a performance centered on the life and accomplishments of a famous person who died at her current age. Starting with J Robert Oppenheimer at age 63 in 2004, Margo created artwork, poetry, and organized group performances about the lives and work of Joan Mitchell, Elizabeth Bishop, Denise Levertov, Walt Disney, Donald Judd and Louis Armstrong. Often whimsical, somewhat zany, Margo would employ all strategies to heighten our understanding of the courage and determination of these artists and to bring us closer to their creative lives. To celebrate the life and magic of Louis Armstrong, Margo choreographed “STOPTIME: Louis Armstrong Festival”, bringing together musicians, artists, and performers to create over a dozen events from 4 to midnight on July 6, 2011. The amazing Horns of Hudson band played, art teachers hosted a Rhythm! Color! Collage! Workshop for kids, tap dancers performed and joy--inspired by the music of Louis Armstrong--was shared by all at Congress Park in Saratoga Springs.
In this multi-year art piece, Margo’s thirst for engagement, discovery and the sparks that fly as minds ignite ideas together was most alive. In Margo’s words: “As the population of my Dead at community grows, I often circle back to someone I’ve previously followed. It’s a game I play, a bit like playing dollhouse. What if I move Joan Mitchell from her attic studio to the library? Will she run into Elizabeth Bishop revising poems? What will they find to say to each other?”
“My Dead at project thrives on continuum, one year rolls over into the next until it does not, as in the beginning of W.S. Merwin’s “For the Anniversary of My Death”:
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Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Margo is survived by her two sons, Nicholas H Shermeta and Benjamin J Shermeta, daughter in law Melissa Anne Conroy, granddaughters Emilia Ruth Shermeta, Lindsay Anne Shermeta, Lila Blaine Shermeta, and grandson Joseph Wester Shermeta; and last, her dear friend, companion and the love of her life John McQueen. Margo was preceded in death by her one brother, Jimmy Mensing.
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This year beginning on October 4th, let us celebrate and cherish the life work and accomplishments of Margo Mensing.
Come join us for a celebration at Cossayuna Lake on October 4th. Please RSVP. Expressions of love, creative ditties, and/or flowers are all welcome and will be on display during the celebration! Please send to 11 Dodge Rd, Ithaca NY 14850 care of Benjamin J Shermeta.
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If you would like to make a donation to find a cure for hydrocephalus and improve the lives of those impacted by the condition: Hydrocephalus Association https://www.hydroassoc.org/ham2024/
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​- J. Shermeta