ANNIE HECKMAN

Annie Heckman, Szechenyi Bridge, December 29, 2009

You told me that the end of life looks just like the mouth of a broad tunnel: a project on Budapest’s Labyrinth and Bridges

I’m writing from the second week of my residency at the Hungarian Multicultural Center, directed by Beata Szechy. In the winter of 2005-6, I came to the same residency with many questions, and left with more. This time I decided to return to Budapest to explore its labyrinth and bridges as a way of developing imagery imagining the mythic underworld tunnels of hell and the pearly gates of heaven. Who knew that drawing hell could be so fun?

In considering visual metaphors for death, loss, and the afterlife, I turned to the Budavari Labirintus, Budapest’s underground labyrinth, as a physical starting point. The bridges of Budapest, as well as various grand portals, are helping me produce a different set of elements in these images. Somewhere tucked in my mind from early musings on the potential of post-life existence are two distinct and opposed visions: underground tunnels signifying an uncertain and painful hell, and palatial entryways leading the way to cloudy heights.

To set the verbal side of my mind in motion, I’ve been looking at the writings of Maria Nagy, a Hungarian psychologist who investigated the relationship between age and comprehension of death, most notably in her 1948 study with children and adolescents in Budapest. In many cases these children knew death quite well, and their poetic interpretations of its mechanisms are striking.

Annie Heckman, Wine fountain, Budavari Labirintus, December 31, 2009

Nagy describes the children as creating theories about death to reflect their understandings of the world at different developmental stages. These writings are tied to the labyrinth and bridges only by location, and came up as I was researching a potential collaboration together with (lovely, talented) artist Elise Goldstein. Without these words my project would be floating somewhere between tourism and solitary studio work; they are shifting the way I engage with the images.

I arrived in Budapest knowing that I wanted to make at drawings and a book, and committed to an animation and installation once I arrived and saw the richness of the imagery. After much daytime exploring with nighttime studio work, I’m having a more settled day in the studio. I’ll be leaving a few drawings with Beata in Hungary, bringing some home, and continuing the work on the project when I get back to the states. The animation will join the drawings back in Budapest when it is exhibited later this year.

Check back for some photos, a reading list, and updates on the project (and yes New Year’s is total madness here).

Annie Heckman, Studio table in Budapest, January 5, 2010

The series of drawings I’m developing is specially priced as a fund-raising project to support my two-week residency. 10% of the purchase price will be donated to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. When you purchase a drawing you have the option to receive updates from me about the residency, as well as an e-book giving you a more in-depth view of the project in 2010. New works will be posted for sale as I complete them and work will shipped when I return to the states after January 15. Find the drawings online here.

After much gnashing of teeth and so on, a new artist statement has emerged. I’m feeling particular gratitude to Juliet Jacobson, for initiating an exchange of writings that helped me sort out ideas, and to Elise Goldstein, who gave me a deadline related to an upcoming talk and a long chat about my work over coffee the other day. This is the first statement I’ve had that feels like it’s in the same camp with my other writings, so I’m grateful and pleased.

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My work has four elements: love, death, people, and animals. These form the starting points for anything I make. Love and death are two limit points of experience, and people and animals are able to approximate an encounter with those limits.

I make different structures using these parts: drawings, animations, installations, and writings. Elements of landscape and architecture appear throughout these works: walls, grass, icebergs, dirt, and the ocean. These function as sets and props to support the characters in these awkward tragedies: cats and dogs, dead relatives, rodents, the kid, and the brain doctor.

My experiences influence the specificity of these characters, settings, and themes. When I was a kid, I walked down the train tracks to the edge of town with my friend to look at a huge dead crow. I felt a kinship with the boys in Stand By Me with this coming of age, but of course my encounter was much simpler. Still: the moldering bird, a bunny my dog tried to eat—these were my first forays into an inkling of mortality, an understanding that has since broadened and deepened inevitably and against my desires. Faced with the impossibility of characterizing mortality, I look back to these moments of awe to formulate a language for approaching death and loss. I want my viewers to remake these early encounters with me, to become my companions in brief confrontations with the unknown.

Looking deeply into anything with wonder is a form of re-generation and of self-abuse. This is the connective thread running through religion, love, sex, death, and all methods of amplifying the imagination. Making something to look at deeply with wonder is particularly complicated.

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted and there are a lot of things to catch up on! Here are a few shots from the West Carroll Open Studios. You can see my work along with pieces from Elise Goldstein, Lorien Jordan, and Jeriah Hildwine, as well as our books from StepSister Press. Thanks to the folks with Chicago Artists Month and to everyone who participated and visited.

West Carroll Open Studios, October 26, 2008

West Carroll Open Studios, October 26, 2008

West Carroll Open Studios, October 26, 2008

West Carroll Open Studios, October 26, 2008

West Carroll Open Studios, October 26, 2008

West Carroll Open Studios, October 26, 2008