ANNIE HECKMAN

You thought that you were alone but I caught your bullet just in time (detail), 2009, paper, graphite, phosphorescent paint, dimensions variable, installed at The Art Center Highland Park

For a Limited Time Only opened on Friday to a huge crowd at The Art Center. It was a lively event and we’re grateful to everyone who came to check out the show. Kathryn Born has written a great piece about the exhibit for ArtSlant, “Art Is Not Eternal.” You’ll see work from the other artists in the show on that site; they were a dream to work with, and it’s also time for another shout out to our curator Olga Stefan for bringing us all together.

My piece evolved to include a wall installation on the outside of the enclosure, signaling its contents to viewers. This came up following a suggestion from the gallery director and really improved the way the work sat in the space; without the wall piece the enclosure, a light-controlled gallery-within-a-gallery, had the potential to look deceptively like a sort of un-enterable boxy sculpture. It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these wall pieces; in this one the various parts are all balanced on pins or on one another, with no adhesive and no pins actually tacking them down. Here’s an image:

You thought that you were alone but I caught your bullet just in time (exterior view), 2009, paper, graphite, phosphorescent paint, dimensions variable, installed at The Art Center Highland Park

Now that the work is in place I’m going through photos of the project and moving on to make a few drawings (on flat, rectangular paper — no bone shapes) in the vein of the Becoming Formless project (think: maggots). That animation is on its way to a few upcoming shows in New York and New Jersey — updates soon!

The piece is up! Visit us at the opening on Friday — there are some awesome projects by Jessica Witte, Wendy Kveck, Marci Rubin, and an edible catalog designed by Shawn Stucky. We’ve been spending a lot of time installing this week, and the artists are all absolutely smart and charming (as well as the rah rah awesome staff at the Art Center), so the event is going to be a lot of fun. I’m hoping (fingers and toes crossed) that my piece stays standing for the opening reception, and for a while after that. It would be nice to spend some extra time looking at it. Although the point of the show is, of course, that it could fall any time, so I suppose that this is the moment where I let go.

You thought that you were alone but I caught your bullet just in time, 2009, paper, graphite, phosphorescent paint, dimensions variable

Here is a quick photo of the piece. It’s become much more intricate, and you’ll notice that having it installed in an enclosed space (instead of in the middle of a bigger studio) casts a lot of light, all from the glow paint.

Today the house of cards finally went up, after many attempts. I was reminded that the classic problem of the house of cards is that the builder gets excited towards the end and trembles, destroying the whole thing. That happened a few times. Photos tomorrow!

The vendor of the day is Glow Inc. Their products are pretty remarkable. Their *weakest* glowing paint, the white paint I’m using for this project, is bright enough that a fellow artist thought the work was being lit by a blacklight when there was no light source present. In fact, my room-within-a-room is much more lit up by the installation itself than I had anticipated, and I’m having to make adjustments to make the pieces more discernable because they’re casting so much light on each other. If these kind of technical glow details interest you, the Glow Forum (managed by Glow Inc.) might be a good site to visit. It features a ton of questions and ideas about how to use the paint, and feedback from folks at the company to help people understand the paint’s properties and capabilities.

And a very wise, discerning artist I am honored to know has featured my work in his writings at the Chicago Art Examiner. Check out this article from Darrell Roberts, “Have you ever wanted to see art that glows?“, and drop him a comment to tell him how smart he is for being interested in phosphorescent art!

A search for ‘glow in the dark’ on Youtube yields some interesting results. Here’s one of them below:

Annie Heckman, You thought that you were alone but I caught your bullet just in time (in progress), 2008

Here’s our initial press release for the show coming up in March. Please forward widely and get in touch if you have any questions about the show or the work!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

What:
For a Limited Time Only, exhibition featuring 5 emerging artists, of whom 3 are Chicago-based.  Curated by Olga Stefan.

Who:
Artists: Annie Heckman, Marci Rubin, Jess Witte, Shawn Stucky and Wendy Kveck.

Where:
The Art Center Highland Park
1957 Sheridan Road
Highland Park, IL 60035
phone: (847) 432-1888
fax: (847) 432-9106
Our Winter Hours:
Mon-Fri: 9:00am-4:00pm
Sat: 9:00am-3:00pm

When:
March 6-March 29, 2009
Opening Reception: Friday, March 6, 6:30-9pm
Wine and appetizers will be served.

About the exhibition:
For a Limited Time Only explores the ephemeral nature of art, and by extension, humanity’s imprint and the artist’s mark, through works that will exist only for the extent of the exhibition.  The projects deteriorate, or even disintegrate completely, during the course of the show. For a Limited Time Only concentrates on the urgency of the work, and encourages the artists, as well as audiences, to consider these projects philosophically, focusing primarily on the idea of the work as temporary experience rather than artistic mark, and memory rather than document.

Catalogue printed on wafer paper with edible inks will, with essay by Olga Stefan, and design by Shawn Stucky, will be distributed at the opening.  In keeping with the concept of the exhibit, guests are requested to dispose of and/or consume the catalogue upon reading.

About the artists:
Annie Heckman is an artist based in Chicago.  Her work explores mortality and afterlife ideologies through sculptural animation installations and works on paper. She has shown her work in numerous spaces, including exhibitions in Chicago, New York City, and Budapest. She is the founder of StepSister Press.

Marci Rubin is a Chicago-based sculptor and printmaker.  Her work focuses on transformations through process and materials.  Marci has exhibited throughout the city and has received her MFA from the University of Chicago.  Her work can be seen at Framing Mode, a business that she manages and owns.

Wendy Kveck is a multi-media artist living and working in Las Vegas, Nevada, but has shown throughout the country, and in Chicago.  Wendy received her MFA at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and her BFA in Painting from The University of Iowa, Iowa City.  Her work focuses on women’s role in society and humanity’s obsession with consumption.

Shawn Stucky is a Chicago-based printmaker.  His work makes a strong bond among music, feelings, and experiences in life. For Shawn, music can create feelings that he cannot manage to put into words, but feels compelled to create art that gives those feelings a tangible form.  Shawn has exhibited at Around The Coyote, the Chicago Art Open, and other venues throughout the city.

Jess Witte is a St. Louis based artist, originating from Illinois, where she received her MFA from Northern Illinois University.  Her work has been exhibited throughout the Midwest at museums and art organizations.  Jess has worked in arts administration for many years and is currently the gallery assistant for the Pulitzer Foundation Art Gallery in St. Louis.

About the curator:
Olga Stefan was the executive director of the Chicago Artists’ Coalition, from 2005-2008 and the executive director of Around the Coyote from 1998-2003.  From 2003-2005, Olga was the grant writer for Woman Made Gallery.  She has curated several exhibitions, including an international show, “Palpable Disequilibrium: Contemporary Art in Romania” at the gallery of Barat College and LIPA Gallery in Chicago, “Resurrection” at Yello Gallery and the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, “Please Print” and many others at ATC Space.  She has also served as juror for several festivals, shows, and granting agencies.  Olga currently resides in Zurich, Switzerland.

Some time back in October, I decided to start an installation project involving paper cut-out, glow-in-the-dark, hand-drawn bones. Lots of them. Inspired by Olga Stefan’s curatorial approach to For a Limited Time Only (an upcoming show at The Art Center in Highland Park featuring the installation), I wanted to make a structure that would start out as an intricate web of interlocking parts, but then break down over the course of the show. I also wanted to make use of the time decay of glow-in-the-dark paint, and white glow-in-the-dark paint has a particularly short glow time (about twenty minutes, compared to several hours for some of the stronger phosphorescent colors like green). I decided to move forward with a house-of-cards structure made up of drawn paper human and animal bones. An early incarnation of this project, with only the most basic bones, is below. Any macabre fans of the European bone churches, such as the Ossuary in the Czech Republic and the Capuchin Chapel in Rome, will find the overall structure familiar. These tremendously sad, hallucinatory burial grounds have been a long fascination of mine since I saw the Capuchin Chapel during a visit to Rome in 2003. The whole installation is, in its own odd way, a tribute to my brother. It’s perhaps a bit of a sick tribute, but given his support of my projects, I think he would have appreciated the gesture made as part of a lesson in mortality from his loss.

Annie Heckman, You thought that you were alone but I caught your bullet just in time (in progress, darkened view), 2008, paper, graphite, phosphorescent paint, dimensions variable

When I was planning all this out, with such rich enthusiasm, I started by approaching the mechanics of the house-of-cards structure, taking a lesson from the famous cardstacker Bryan Berg in his excellent and weirdly meditative book. I learned that I would need a thick, rough paper for the bones to stand up and rest on each other without slipping, and I found that my best bet was a 300 lb. cold press Arches paper. Then I started making bone stencils, then tracing, cutting, priming several times with glow-in-the-dark paint, drawing on the shadows and lines with graphite, and then painting in highlights in glow-in-the-dark paint again. The process is pretty spectacular, and when my cats get involved it’s beyond weird.

This went on for a while. Then my hands got tired. Chopping through 300 lb. paper is no small task, and I eventually decided to do the right thing and have these bones laser cut. This changed the whole project from a stencil process to a getting-things-done-in-Illustrator project. Below is a cropped example of one of the layouts I’ve used. I’ll get my first shipment of bones from the laser cutter tomorrow. Technology is beautiful.

Annie Heckman, bone layout, process photo

Would any of the many other artists out there making work related to the skeletal system like to talk about a bone show? Leave me comments and links below if you’re interested.

The announcement is ready, desiged by Shawn Stucky.

For a Limited Time Only
featuring Annie Heckman, Wendy Kveck, Marci Rubin, Shawn Stucky, and Jesse Witte
curated by Olga Stefan

Art Center Highland Park
1957 Sheridan Road
Highland Park, IL 60035
847.432.1888

March 6-29, 2009
Opening reception: March 6, 6:30-9:30 pm

There will be an edible catalog for this with an essay by Olga Stefan. I’m very curious to see how it’s done, and I might archive mine instead of eating it.
I hope you can join us, please bring friends, and send me a note if you have any questions or would like to be added to my mailing list.