ANNIE HECKMAN

This spring, after much anticipation, I was thrilled to be the recipient of a Community Arts Assistance Program Grant through the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs. Back in December (hence the much anticipation), I had proposed to create glow-in-the-dark iceberg sculptures as part of a surreal Antarctic installation project. This installation will eventually be exhibited alone and as part of a 2-person show, Love Letters to Antarctica, with the fantastic Lorien Jordan, whose works on paper based on uncanny accounts of Antarctic explorations have been inspiring me for almost a year.

It’s been rewarding and humbling for me to go through this process — to develop an idea, receive cash to push it to completion, and then move forward. The CAAP grant is forcing me to abandon some of my more amorphous work habits and to funnel my efforts in a specific order: think, draw, propose, budget, rework, shop, make, fix, shop, make, complete, document, exhibit. The ‘fix’ phase of that sequence has taken longer than I had expected, and I’ve gotten a chance to go back and school myself on some basic sculptural construction issues. So right now I’m in the elbow grease mode, and will cover the process in more detail here in the coming months.

For the time being, as I get ready for some more foam hacking and coating tomorrow, I’m going to study up with an amazing, childhood-harkening video of Cousteau in Antarctica.

This video captured my attention, and barely frightened the kittens.