Art Lecture Series

The Evergreen State College

Tag: assemblages

Jenny Heishman: Wednesday April 10, 2013 11:30-1:00, Lecture Hall 1

June 10, 2021 /

With a practice akin to an alchemist, Jenny Heishman creates approachable objects that elicit misunderstanding and require a shift in perspective. Using a variety of run-of-the-mill materials including aluminum foil, ceramic tiles, paper, tape, fabric and Styrofoam, Heishman alters the way we experience the use of these humble items. Encountering her works on paper and in sculpture, one recognizes her misuse of material and her interest in broken patterns, faux surfaces and optical illusions. Jenny Heishman grew up in Florida surrounded by theme parks, water flumes and golf courses. Nature was mimicked — much of her world was a reconstruction of some other place’s history and landscape. She writes: “Because we enjoyed year-round warmth, we built the seasonal changes with plastic autumn leaves, artificial snow, and unspoken agreements. This environment taught me how to use objects to create a fabricated reality.” Her work encourages us to find pleasure in the act of looking and her playful gestures reward us with multiple visual surprises. Heishman received the Betty Bowen Award and a Pollock-Krasner Foundationan grant in 2011. She received her MFA from Ohio State University in 1998.

Nikki McClure: Wednesday October,17, 2012, 11:30-1:00, Lecture Hall 1

June 10, 2021 /

Nikki McClure of Olympia, Washington is known for her painstakingly intricate and beautiful paper cuts. Armed with an X-acto knife, she cuts out her images from a single sheet of paper and creates a bold language that translates the complex poetry of motherhood, nature, and activism into a simple and endearing picture.

Her work depicts the virtues of hard labor and patience, which is inherent in her process as well as in the images themselves: weathered hands washing dishes, people sweeping, mothers caring for their babies, and farmers working the land. But there is also a large element of celebration, of taking the time to roll around in the grass and get wet from the early morning dew. The need for all of us to lay down on the ground, grab hold of the earth, look at the stars and dream. She magnifies the importance of simple things, like the change of seasons, slowing down the world for a moment so we can actually taste it.

Nikki’s images exude a positivity that revolves around community, sustenance, parenting, and appreciating both the urban and rural landscape, undoubtedly influenced by her home in the Northwest and specifically Olympia. As one of the more prominent visual artists involved with Olympia-based record labels K and Kill Rock Stars, as well as the Riot Grrrl movement in the early nineties, Nikki’s work still embodies the fiercely independent fire that fueled the passion and creativity of that time period.

She regularly produces her own posters, books, cards, t-shirts and a beloved yearly calendar as well as designs covers for countless records and books, including illustrations for magazines the Progressive and Punk Planet. She is a self-taught artist who has been making paper-cuts since 1996.

-Cinders Gallery

Katy Stone: Wednesday, February 1, 2012, 11:30-1:00, Lecture Hall 1

June 10, 2021 /

Katy Stone paints on a variety of materials and layers the elements into sculptural assemblages and installations that blur the boundaries between drawing, painting, and sculpture, engaging viewers with their complex fluidity. “I create objects with visual magnetism and distinct material presence that reflect the generative power of nature…Their exuberance and beauty shadow a longing: the desire for things to last, a wish against decay…The layers of tension between transience and permanence, nature and artifice, substance and ethereality, growth and decay are pivotal in the work.”

Stone has exhibited at nationally and internationally at galleries in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Vienna, and at museums including The McNay, and the Boise Art Museum and alternative spaces including Suyama Space in Seattle. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions across the US including “Art+Space” at Project4 in Washington, DC, “Other Worlds,” at the Jacksonville Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville, Florida; “Earthly Delights,” at Mass Art in Boston; and internationally at The Chengdou International Biennale in Chengdou, South Korea. She has been reviewed in many publications including Artweek, New Art Examiner, Sculpture Magazine and Art in America. Her commissioned public artworks include projects at Conoco Phillips in Houston, King County Correctional Facility in Seattle, Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, The Ascent in Cincinnati, designed by Daniel Libeskind, and at Twin Parks, in Taichung, Taiwan, among others. In 2011, she will complete her first commission for the GSA’s Art in Architecture Program, at a Federal Courthouse in Jackson, MS, designed by H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture. Originally from Iowa, Stone received her MFA in Painting from the University of Washington in 1994.

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