Cotton, silk, paste resist, hand painted, embroidery.
Photogravure, graphite.
Steel, gut, mother of pearl buttons, clothing labels.
Wood fired ceramic, under glaze, steel, paper clay, encaustic.
“Heather Hietala — Explorations,” featuring the work of Heather Hietala, who is represented by Momentum Gallery, invites viewers into a world of vessels, paddles, and forms that symbolize life’s journeys, transitions, and relationships. Showcasing an innovative mix of materials, including wood-fired ceramics, textiles, wire, and natural elements, Hietala’s work embodies movement and stillness, choice and possibility. Each piece is inscribed with fragments of inner dialogue, offering a contemplative experience that bridges the personal and universal. Hietala’s art serves as both an anchor and a passage, encouraging reflection on the interconnected nature of life and self.
The exhibition opens on Thursday, March 20. Community members are invited to a reception in the gallery on Thursday, March 20, from 6:00-7:00 PM for an evening with the artist. The exhibition runs through April 18. We are grateful to Momentum Gallery for allowing Asheville School the opportunity to showcase pieces from Hietala’s impressive body of work.
Artist Statement
With a singular voice I explore form, purpose, and design thru experimentation with a diverse range of materials. I am an innovator across many mediums; this exhibition includes wood fired ceramic, cloth, wire, paper, gut and natural materials from my orchard garden. I let intuition and experience guide me, engaging in dialogues that explore relationships and the cyclical nature of life. My art distills and expresses my journey through life. For years the staircase was my muse. The stairs alluded to a journey, becoming metaphors for expressing various paths, transitions, and thresholds within life’s experiences. Similarly, a boat symbolizes a journey and a vessel can symbolize self, they are both universal and personal. Seedpods, canoes, paddles, sailboats, weaving shuttles, and kayaks are part of my personal history and now the vessel in all its many forms is my muse.
The vessel form is universal and timeless, a symbol for the self and one’s journey through life. I use the vessel and paddle form as a canvas to express ideas and relationships. My materials and processes are intentional; each piece holds a story, in the forms I create, in the material and techniques chosen, and in the words inscribe on the surfaces, fragments of my inner dialogue or advice for the viewer. My work is about relationships, those found in life and the materials themselves. It explores motion and stillness, balance and counter balance, of delicate and strong, mass versus line, stillness versus movement, large versus small, and heavy versus light. The vessel and paddle form allows me a vehicle to investigate ideas, narratives and relationships.
We are all vessels, all trying to go or get somewhere. My ceramic wall groupings speak of choice and possibility, they are hand built of stoneware and wood fired; the unpredictable nature of atmospheric firing echoes the unpredictability of life. In the wall grouping, the vessel you choose sets a path. The paddle used one day steers you in one direction, choose another paddle or vessel, and you may navigate another way of your choosing. Inscribed words, advice for the vessel’s journey, are written onto the clay’s surface providing a human connection. Visible mending, in the form of metal sutures, restores the cracks that emerge in the creative process echoing the emotional and physical scars of life. Broken everyday glass is transformed in the firing from utility to beauty, capturing light, alluding to water and providing a symbolic connection to spirit and hope.
The textiles and prints speak about the vessel as self and of relationships, of transport and journey, influenced by the moon and the tides, and also of being at rest, at anchor, pulled up on the beach beyond the high tide line, one of many tied up at a dock or moored in a harbor, in dry dock for the winter, or abandoned and forgotten. They are about movement but also resting, waiting and dreaming. Printmaking allows me to work through ideas quickly, similar to sketching. In “Reaching” the image of an anchor rope is inscribed into a Plexiglas plate. The words hand written into the ink on the hand wiped plate balances the rigidity of the inscribed image. Similarly in “Reflections” I balanced the hardedge of the photographic image with a layer of handwritten words in graphite. In “Solitude” there is the contrast of the mysterious landscape created by the snow against the defined form of the vessel. In each case I am using the textile or print to create a sense of narrative
The natural work is a collaboration with my permaculture garden. A sense of time passing is evident in a garden; the stripes represent the marking of this time, the growth rings of a tree, the transition between one year’s growth to the next, the seasonal transitions, the cycles of the moon, all rites of passage. Nature is multifaceted, my house came with an old heirloom rose, its blooms are delicate pale pink with the subtle perfume of rose water, and one must bend in close to smell. In strong contrast to this delicacy, “sharks teeth” thorns protectively adorn it branches. Nature has many facets to her personalities just like people. The respectful graceful and symbiotic relationship I have with my garden is reflected in these pieces. In this work I am interested in bringing the natural world inside as an antidote to urban life, to make people stop and take notice of the inherent beauty of a branch and to take that renewed awareness with them when they are in nature, to stop and notice her individuality.
The paddle is an amazing instrument, whether its use is symbolic or practical. They are amazing, providing the ability to go somewhere using one’s own volition. Historical trade routes and the paddles that propelled canoes or dinghies carrying the trade goods ashore inspired the wire and gut work. Created separately, individual pieces are presented in pairs or groupings that strengthen and highlight this sense of similarity and contrast. A dialogue is created by the contrast of 2D and 3D, of clay and cloth, of hard and soft, of line and form. The negative spaces extending the pieces and representing the silent energy or unsaid between the individual elements. It is my goal that in presenting different groupings and installations, provocative relationships and dialogues are created.
My art serves as ballast and anchors my life. I create it as an antidote to the hectic craziness of the modern world we live in. Vessels and paddles are familiar and inclusive, we are all vessels, all striving to go somewhere. In a world bombarded by discord and violence, my work strives to provide a pause and a sense of a timeless and nonverbal connection.
About the Artist
Heather Hietala is a studio artist, educator, and permaculture gardener. The vessel, relationships and the ongoing journey of life inspire her mixed media work. She received her BFA in painting and sculpture from the University of New Hampshire and her MFA in textiles from the University of Massachusetts – Dartmouth. Her work has been shown in numerous galleries and museums across the U.S. and internationally including solo shows at Oeno Gallery, Bloomfield, Ontario, Blue Spiral 1, Asheville, NC, Black Mountain Center for the Arts, NC, Steeple of Light Gallery, Kansas City, KS and Sculpture Square, Singapore. Her work is in the collection of the Racine Art Museum, WI, Asheville Art Museum, NC, Gregg Museum of Art and Design, Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Arts Commission, Raleigh, NC, Wingate University, Wingate, NC, Agnico Eagle Gold Corporation, Toronto, ON, Fidelity Investments, Boston, MA, First Union Bank, Charlotte, NC, Horn Collection of Contemporary Craft, Little Rock, AK, and the Biltmore Estate, Asheville, NC. Her work has appeared in the periodicals Asheville Made, New Ceramics, The Laurel of Asheville, Carolina Home & Garden, Surface Design Journal, American Craft Magazine, Art Quilt Magazine, Senshoku Alpha, Verve magazine, and in the books Real Life Journals, Naturally a Book, Book Seeds, Small but Powerful, 500 Handmade Books Vol 2, 500 Quilts, Quilt National 2011, Fiberarts Design Book V, VI, and VII, and International Textile Design. Following her love of words and writing she has written reviews and articles for magazines and wrote “Weaving Contemporary Rag Rugs”, Lark Books 1998, which was translated and published in Japanese by Mori-Tuttle Agency, Inc., 2005. She has won several awards include an NEA Regional Fellowship, and a TN Arts Commission Fellowship. Residencies include Centrum Center for the Arts (WA) and Penland Instructors New Works Retreat, Penland School of Craft, Penland, NC. Her work is available at Momentum Gallery, Asheville, NC and Oeno Gallery, Ontario, Canada. Hietala lives and works in Asheville, NC.
Visit heatherhietala.com to learn more about the artist.