Pronouncements
Heather Tolleson is a painter, sculptor, and mixed-media installation artist living and working in Austin, Texas. She has been creating and showing works for the past ten years. A partner in Atelier 3-D, she continues to focus on pure formalism while utilizing materials classic to artists for centuries, reused and reinvented for the modern world. Heather is currently pursuing a degree in Art History and Philosophy from The University of Texas at Austin.
Bio:
Born and raised on the move. Deep South and beyond. California—the Big One. Educated in various and sundry public schools. From generation pre-YouTube. Reared by parents and cable television. Altered by chronic illness. Artist for ten years: painter trained by various and sundry painters; sculptor trained by talented and slightly insane sculptors. Still striving for the perfect union, perfect simplicity, and perfect immortality.
Statement:
My work reflects having spent a third of my life in isolation. My observations are brought to bear in silence. Abstractions are valuable for their non- verbal form of reflection—their power to carry human emotionality in a way we discover by bringing ourselves, as viewers, to the work. We are all bound by our fears and pasts and desperate loves. My pieces are fecund with my own scars, but obvious to you through only your own. In this world of mass production and reproduction –and our gripping greed for sentimentality and predictability– we need the shock of extraordinary unreality, clean bold visuals and strikingly statement-less pieces to stir us to stillness. Usually the mode of reaching-out surpasses reaching-in and chooses instead the absent shock that even children manage. There is, I believe, the possibility of feeling without the baser tearing flesh and tenderness. There is, I believe, the possibility of innovation without violation. There is, I believe, still the novel without necessarily the vile in this “close the patent office” time. But what the devil do I know, I am only a child.
funny how…
… inane I feel in putting misplaced words to a misplaced life. I hear echoes of past pen-crimes: I am neither kind nor timid and I am cut free; No bit destruction is enough; For a short time a small god; No sanctity and no meaning– though these themselves are just an assembly of letters. I cannot piece it, nor am I willing to finger the wreckage and ruin, pick a piece and hold it to the light. I am, I am, and know little else. I do and sin in doing. Somewhere in the time that slides between I sleep a little and tell myself, mild-smiling, I have won.
Sculpture: the purity of form, the confrontation of an object on the human plane, and our relation to and reaction to that object. The material serves the idea. The idea is the physical manifestation of a strictly mental phenomenon. I seek to use and misuse materials common to sculpture– to test that material’s boundaries and my own. Inspired by the organic forms of nature and the line of two-dimensional gesture studies, I make unnatural of the natural, and make battle with the laws of nature in a three-dimensional world.
Twisting the traditional, and in this time of rapid reproduction, I fondle the relevance of the past—the past of portraiture, sculpture, and my own past. The image is mine— used, abused: the image is woman– all and none. The words are my own, the fortunes and misfortunes, all that’s hidden, all that’s plain. Is there relevance in the past—in one’s own past— and does it linger in the flesh, in the clay, in the hubris, bliss, and grave mistakes? Here is evidence, anyway, of some of what remains.
Resume:
Group Shows:
Austin City Hall, The People’s Gallery, juried exhibition, Austin, TX 2010
Austin Galleries, Texas Society of Sculptors, juried exhibition, Austin, TX 2009
The Crossings, Texas Society of Sculptors, juried exhibition, Austin, TX 2009
Texas Society of Sculptors, Sculptfest, Umlauf Sculpture Center, Austin, TX 2009
Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, juried exhibition, Austin, TX 2009
5×7 Show, Arthouse at the Jones Center, Austin, TX 2009
BASH Benefit for Austin State Hospital, Austin, TX 2009
Austin City Hall, The People’s Gallery, juried exhibition, Austin, TX 2009
Atelier 3-D, East Austin Studio Tour, Austin, TX 2008
Telos, Christophers Gallery, Marfa, TX 2008
The Crossings, Texas Society of Sculptors, juried exhibition, Austin, TX 2008
5×7, Dunn and Brown Contemporary, Dallas, TX 2008
5×7, Inman Gallery, Houston, TX 2008
Identity Complex, Austin Art Start, Metrohouse, Austin, TX 2008
5×7 Show, Arthouse Jones Center, Austin, TX 2008
Museum of Fine Arts, Austin, TX 2008
Brocca Gallery, TSOS Abstract Show, juried exhibition, Austin, TX 2008
Austin Figurative Gallery, Self-Portrait Show, Austin, TX 2008
Atelier 3-D, East Austin Studio Tour, Austin, TX 2007
Schoen Studios, East Austin Studio Tour, Austin, TX 2007
Texas State Gallery, Sculpture Network of Texas, juried exhibition, San Marcos 2007
Prime, Chinati Weekend, Marfa, TX 2007
Texas Clay Artists Association, Six Pack Show, Austin, TX 2007
Two-Man Shows:
Austin Art Start Tour, Austin, TX 2007
Solo Shows:
Imperative, Co-Lab, Austin, TX 2009
Infer Genius: Sightless Italians, Big Medium Bay 10, Austin, TX 2008
Awards:
AVAA Artist of the Year: Early Career 2009