Heather Harvey!

Tuesday afternoon I attended the talk given by Heather Harvey.  She started her talk with a disclaimer of sorts telling us how she is frequently asked what her work means.  She went into great detail about how she is interested in "the human condition", especially aspects of which remain "unresolved".  She told us that she wants her work to "overlap" a number of categories/ideas, and hopes to create works that allude to a "variety" of things and "suggest something larger".   She explained further, pulling her background and interests into play...she informed the audience that she has always been interested in how the world works. Well read, or at least 'well researched', Heather referenced many well known figures in her description of her thought process- at one point even (reluctantly quoting Einstein!).  She made/quoted one point in particular that really resonated with me.  Using video games as her analogy, she presented the world as a well designed place that looks as though it works, but when you zoom in(on places that are not intended to be seen close up, like backgrounds...) the system breaks. The world from a human level makes sense, but as soon as you change perspectives everything gets very confusing(you come up against quantum physic, etc.) She used this point to turn back to her interests.  She shared that she likes focusing on things in between what we consider "known" and the "unknown" parts of our world.  The pictures of her pieces that she had with her were from a recent show "Into the Honeyed Presence Strewn".  Heather described parts of the works as attempting to capture the "chaotic ways of memories", which resulted in forms pushing out from the walls, that proved both playful and almost threatening in appearance.  This also had to do with "unseen infrastructures" such as gravity, quantum physics, and even human emotions...Some of the last things she showed us were her "Hole Drawings" in which she drilled through walls, usually former displays revealing many layers and at the same time creating a design with the holes.  One that I found particularly interesting was one she created by overlapping two Smith Charts (electrical engineering tool).  Lastly she described how she makes some of her "dumb art".  The plaster and wax pieces, and the liquid plaster she pushed through burlap, all created things that looked so different than one might expect if the process was just described without a visual example of the result (a pleasant surprise nonetheless).  Assigning meaning to these last pieces was equally challenging, according to Heather, as were the wall works, however, she did say that they could be looked at as dealing with mortality, and how it is or is not contained in the human body, and how they could be perceived as both playful and morbid works-it ultimately depends on varying perspectives, which seems to be her big point.
I have trouble recalling any other artist in particular that Heather Harvey makes me think of...I cannot say I have ever heard any one admit that they do not always have a concrete idea/message behind a piece and they want it to be ambiguous, they want it to be open to interpretation, either.  However, I found that unbelievably refreshing!  This is as close as my ideas have ever come to "relating" to another artist's.  I loved hearing her talk about trying to capture the essence of things unseen, unproven, unquestionable...I am fascinated by those concepts, and trying to create these things is so "cool" in my mind!



(I'd also like to apologize for the overuse of exclamation points in my most recent blog titles...I just noticed today that I had used them in almost all of my titles.)