ANNIE HECKMAN

Annie Heckman, Love in outer space and under water, 2007, animation still

This was my second animation, created as a silent piece in four channels, kindly commissioned by the South Bend Museum of Art for ‘Meet Me on the Island’, curated by Jason Lahr.

It was a family event. No animals should explode! It was a good challenge. I thought of my mom, and the polar bear at the Lincoln Park Zoo, and created this work.

I wrote a short essay about the piece at the time. Here is an excerpt:

A human experiencing love in outer space is possible, a human experiencing love very far under water is possible, but they are both a stretch.  For a landlubber like me, these circumstances involve fantasy, an increased possibility of death, and anxiety.  This piece is about loving someone and wanting to shoot this person in a rocket into outer space.  It’s about going scuba diving together and ripping off the gear, getting the bends, and floating around with the sharks.  It’s about expecting your dead friends and loved ones to emerge from the ether on a starry night.  It’s about these things happening abstractly, in relation to nature.  It is stupid and earnest and happy.

I’m hosting a retrospective of my animations, right here on the blog.

After years of keeping only segments online, I’ve set up a YouTube channel online with the full pieces. I’ll post them here starting back in 2006 with my first animation work, and move forward in time up until — (drum roll) Letters to a Lost Penguin, my piece premiering at Swimming Pool Project Space this August. Now just crank up your speakers, relax, and enjoy these works with added imagining of high resolution and installed environments!

Annie Heckman, Airline to Heaven, Part I installation, 2006, wood, paint, fabric, screen material, animation projection, dimensions variable, installed at Moreau Art Galleries, 2008

Thanks as always to Muzsikás for the kind permission to use their music in this project.

There are a few pieces of news I haven’t posted in detail here, waiting for bits of logistical dust to settle. Here are the big good facts:

- In 2008, Lorien Jordan asked me to join her in making work about Antarctica, a topic with which she had become appropriately obsessed.

- In 2009, the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs awarded me a Community Arts Assistance Program Grant to make glow-in-the-dark iceberg sculptures for that project

- Realizing that the icebergs needed quite a bit of company to create a full installation and animation, I applied for the Individual Artist Support Initiative Artist Project grant with the Illinois Arts Council in spring of 2010.

- In May 2010, I received this award!

- With this generous assistance from the Illinois Arts Council and the enthusiastic support of owner and curator Liz Nielsen I’m able to present this project together with Lorien’s works at Swimming Pool Project Space in Chicago, a fantastic space less than a mile from my home.

Save these dates to celebrate with us in person this summer!

LOVE LETTERS TO ANTARCTICA
Annie Heckman + Lorien Jordan
(August 21-September 12)

Opening Reception: Saturday, August 21, 2010, 7-10pm
Artist Talk with Annie Heckman: Sunday, August 22, 2010, 2pm
Swimming Pool Project Space, 2858 W. Montrose, Chicago, IL 60618

— In addition to wanting lots of friends in the art world to enjoy this with me, I’m also working to make this project available to young people nearby, as well as Antarctic researchers and enthusiasts. Please pass on this information and get in touch with me if you have suggestions or requests!

Annie Heckman, Green stars, 2006, colored pencil and graphite on paper, 9 x 12 inches, Collection Lorien Jordan (appears in Airline to Heaven, Part II animation)

Writing from the road: the opening last night was beautiful. Everyone at the gallery (Mae, Zeina, Mark, Louis) was so helpful and kind throughout the installation, and cared as much about this piece as I did. It means a lot to me when someone notices that a piece is off by an inch and hops on a ladder up to the ceiling to fix it without hesitation. The show runs through July 3 (details below) and I’ll be updating with more photos, stills, and clips shortly. If you do get a chance to stop by the gallery, please drop me a line in the guest book and/or call me up to tell me about it!

In the midst of wrapping up this project I was asked to write a statement about the piece, and have put together what reads more like a compact essay. This piece, Part II of a three-part series of works, is complex in that it bridges a set of works, neither introducing nor completing an idea, and writing about it helped me to create my own window onto the development of the project. With the recent death of Louise Bourgeois, I’ve been considering how much her approach to the reality of family relationships and the visual resonances of psychoanalysis have influenced my thinking.

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Artist Statement : Airline to Heaven, Part II

I made Airline to Heaven, Part II to narrate a transition: the placement of a set of dead characters into an airplane so that they could fly to heaven. Part I of this series visually introduced the characters, Part III will reveal what they find in the sky, and Part II needed to get them on the plane. I solve the classic narrative problem of moving a character from one room to another by making the human and animals explode out of the picture plane into the aircraft, and by showing you that they have arrived at their seats with a shot of the bunny at the window as the airplane takes off at the end of the short animation.

Woody Guthrie wrote out the lyrics to Airline to Heaven with a nod to the conventions of air travel, including tickets and seating. Years later, Jeff Mangum again envisioned air travel as a metaphor for the afterlife, setting out the notion that our ashes would circle the earth in the lyrics of In an Aeroplane Over the Sea. Every time I imagine these possibilities I feel a tug of transcendent potential and a simultaneous grounding in the deniability of such a concrete metaphor: there is no physical place in the sky, no airplane waiting for me, no reunion.

Drawing from this conflicted response to the hope of a heaven airline, I create a feverish layering of imagery, regenerative movements, indicators of magic, and an acknowledgment of certain physical accompaniments to death: blood, the blue diamond pattern on a hospital gown, the dirt of a grave. The metaphor of an Airline to Heaven becomes the entry point for a mode of imagination that allows us to create scenarios beyond our own experience, a mental space where shared affections and loss are given full expression with the symbolic renderings of death and regeneration. I constructed the animation piece at the center of a spatially layered, drawn hell-mouth, and made it the most life-giving hell-mouth I could imagine in order to capture the cyclical nature of any afterlife construction.

As I told my father when I decided to dedicate this piece to him, the animation would be a bloodbath, almost from start to finish. This is fulfilled in the piece, but the blood flits in and out as red water, as a transition, and as a frame through which images are viewed. In a similar way, the limit point of death serves as a framework for retracing attachment, loss, and affection. I dedicated this piece to my father because he has been my closest partner in trying to prevent and confront a particular loss.

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Airline to Heaven, Part II will be on view this month as part of

MISC Video and Performance
June 3 - July 3

NY Studio Gallery
154 Stanton St @ Suffolk in the LES New York, NY 10002
JMZ or F trains to Delancey / Essex
www.nystudiogallery.com 212.627.3276 info [at] nystudiogallery.com
Hours: Thurs - Sat, noon - 6 pm or by appointment

The gallery has extended the reception to 11.30 tonight! Here’s a photo of the installation.

Airline to Heaven, Part II, 2010, animation projection, screen fabric, wood, paper, tacks, gouache, graphite, marker, 120 x 84 x 144 inches, animation duration: 3 minutes, 54 seconds, installed at NY Studio Gallery

MISC Video and Performance
June 3 - July 3

Performances and Reception June 4; 7-11:30pm

NY Studio Gallery
154 Stanton St @ Suffolk in the LES New York, NY 10002
JMZ or F trains to Delancey / Essex
www.nystudiogallery.com 212.627.3276 info [at] nystudiogallery.com
Hours: Thurs - Sat, noon - 6 pm or by appointment

Annie Heckman, Airline to Heaven, Part II, 2010, animation still

Four years ago, shortly after finishing my master’s degree, I was honored and excited to see my first animation, Airline to Heaven, Part I, screen at NY Studio Gallery as part of their MISC Performance & Video series. This year gallery owner Kristen Copham and director Zeina Assaf (both amazing) are adding installation work to the mix, and including the second part of my series, Airline to Heaven, Part II — a long-worked but brand new animation installation that has never been shown before. There will be rabbits, hell-mouths, kittens, the works.

Find the details below and please join us at the opening June 4 if you’re in NYC!
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June 3 - July 3, 2010

Reception and Performances: June 4, 7-10pm

NY Studio Gallery is pleased to present the 5th Annual MISC Video and Performance. A multi-media experience featuring a variety of emerging, mid-career and established artists working in diverse genres ranging from video, animation, live performance, or video installation. Video loops and installations will be accessible during gallery hours, while performances are scheduled during reception night.

Video Installations include:

Ron Diorio extends his documentary practices through What I did during the war. Peter Dobill presents his riveting Bloodbreather video. Interaction and attempted manipulation of natural landscapes makes up Murray Dwertman’s Upper Buttermilk Falls. Airline to Heaven, Part II is Annie Heckman’s animation projection at the end of a long tunnel of drawn dirt and bones. Lynn Herring’s Man’s Inner Reflections is a sculpture that is created with mirrors and video. In Mutes I-V Ryan Kuo dramatically slows down TV footage highlighting unnoticed glitches. Yuliya Lanina creates and exhibits racy animatronic characters in Mishka. In the intimate video Sex-Ed, Matthew de Leon attempts to fill in for an X-rated adult actress. Jennie Thwing creates a miniature diorama of forest with fields, tents and celestial projections. Undulating corner projections by Naho Tariushi come back for their second time at MISC. Ina Yun creates animation projections on made and found objects.

Projected Animation Loop: Jonathan Monaghan, Kanako Okazaki, Ben Pederson, Lai-Chung Poon, Elise Roedenbeck, Devlin Shea, Carmen Tiffany.

Video Loop: Arielle Falk, Jason Head, Morrisa Maltz, Liz Rodda, Bradly Dever Treadaway, Traci Tullius, Joy Whalen.

Rooftop projection: Weather permitting Kyung Woo Han projects two videos reconstructing well-known 2-D imagery from 3-D spaces.

Performances: Hector Canonge presents MALATTIA a multimedia performance using hospital screens and silhouettes to address the AIDS issue. Genevieve White performs Loss using a sculptural cocoon. Mike Richison improvises acoustic inventions on his vacuum-based instrument.

MISC images: French Penguin by Jonathan Monaghan is an animation of an emperor penguin fused with Gothic architecture. Morrisa Maltz creates her own world in Weird Marching Army.

About NY Studio Gallery

NY Studio Gallery combines exhibition and workspace to create an atmosphere of interaction, collaboration and integration of media, styles and artistic genres for US and international artists.

NY Studio Gallery

154 Stanton Street @ Suffolk, New York, NY 10002

info@nystudiogallery.com l 212.627.3276l www.nystudiogallery.com

Thursday - Saturday 12 - 6pm or by appointment

Annie Heckman, Cellar door (still), 2010

Annie Heckman
Cellar door
an animation installation at The Op Shop

Opening April 17, 2010 5-8pm, running through May 1

Cellar door is an animation installation built up from fragments of imagery found in the former Hollywood Video space. Tucked into a corner of the basement, the work consists of a fluid series of movements collaged together in the spirit of surrealist games. The title refers both to the surprising door we found in the basement of the building and to ongoing discussion, dating back to the late 19th century, of the phonic elegance and associative potential of the phrase “cellar door” in literary and linguistic analysis.

In the meantime visit the Op Shop in Hyde Park to see the fabulous projects Laura Shaeffer has put together, everything from visual art to plant and thrift exchanges.

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The Opportunity Shop is temporarily located at
1530 E. 53rd Street
Chicago, Illinois 60615

Friday, March 26th through Saturday, May 1st
Open Thursday - Sunday from 11am - 7pm
Also open coinciding with events on other evenings

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Want your smart thoughts to become blended into this piece? Comment or contact me with your associations with the words “Cellar door.”

I’m so honored that Maurizio Pellegrin has decided to include my piece Becoming Formless in this exhibit  — check out more information on the site for Visions in New York City. The closing reception is Friday, November 13, and sadly I won’t be able to make it to the reception. Please celebrate for me, New Yorkers!

Annie Heckman, A short dream about trains and prairies, from before you moved south, 2 minutes 37 seconds (animation still)

Friday, October 2 (tomorrow!), Brown Rice is hosting an event for the Chicago Calling Arts Festival, including a surprise screening of my new animation piece, A short dream about trains and prairies, from before you moved south. Here’s all the information:

Chicago Calling at Brown Rice
Friday, October 2, 10-11.30pm
4432 N Kedzie Ave
Chicago IL 60625
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Doors open 30 minutes before the show begins. Brown Rice is a half block north of the Montrose / Kedzie intersection, close to the Kedzie station on the CTA brown line. The entrance is below a sign that reads “Perfect”.
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1st set: performance by Chicago Phonography

2nd set: Set of live music, videos by Jayve Montgomery, Annie Heckman,
and Mikey Peterson.
Performers include:
Gregory O’Drobinak — Arc of the Oven / Chicago
Jayve Montgomery — saxophones and percussion
Jim Ryan — kalimba / Oakland
Williwaw — amplified ukulele / Edinburgh
Ernesto Sturm Diaz-Infante San Francisco
Ritwik Banerji — saxophone / Chicago
Steve Dalanchinsky poetry — New York City
Jon Godston — soprano saxophone / Chicago
Michael Staron — bass / Chicago
Jimmy Bennington — drums / Chicago

http://www.chicagophonography.org $5 suggested donation

Thank you as always to Dan Godston for supporting my work!

Annie Heckman, A short dream about trains and prairies, from before you moved south, 2 minutes 37 seconds (animation still)

Annie Heckman; A short dream about trains and prairies, from before you moved south; animation still; thank you to the West Chicago City Museum, 2009

artXposium is up and running again this year for its annual exhibit, in a new form, at the West Chicago City Museum.

Curators Anni Holm and Irene Pérez have challenged us to work more closely with West Chicago as a place, and for my project I decided to delve into the archives at the museum, with the generous help and hospitality of museum curator Sally DeFauw, who helped me sift through the archives when I had a broad starting point of trying to capture something about the city’s history as a railroad town. The process was so interesting and I only scratched the surface.

Combining the images I found with my own memories of growing up in a nearby midwestern town, I created an animation piece called A short dream about trains and prairies, from before you moved south. This piece is being installed together with an amazing train set in the museum’s collection, and uses footage of that train set as a starting point.

Details below if you can join us this weekend! More information and follow-up to come, and in the meantime check out Kathryn Born’s coverage of the exhibit on Art Talk Chicago.

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Locations:
West Chicago City Museum, 132 Main Street in West Chicago, IL 60185
Gallery 200
Main Street Storefronts
19th century CB&Q Depot
West Chicago Public Library District

Friday, September 18:
7-10pm - Meet the Artists Potluck, screening of Reach the Rock

Saturday, September 19: Open 11am-10pm
2pm - guided tour with the curators
5-10pm closing reception with an artist talk by Danish Artist in Residence, Berit Nørgaard, performances by Alison Rhoades, Core Project, Kathryn Born, and John & Mandy Rakow, along with food, drinks, and a silent auction.

artXposium is curated by Anni Holm and Irene Pérez and organized in conjunction with the West Chicago International Artist in Residency Program featuring Berit Nørgaard’s project: If I Can Do It - You Can Do It Too.