Allison: I notice that you have more pieces of work that involve painting than graphic design or typography. You’re concentration is design right?

Heather: [laughing] Yes, my concentration is design and everybody always asks me that question. I guess all I can say is that my passion is painting, but design is something I can make a career out of. A lot of the time I use my skills of painting to enhance my design work. And graphic design is such a hard principle to define. I don’t think it should be separated from all of the other fields of art, which it seems to me that it is. Designers are artists in their own right and I feel like painting, illustration and whatever else goes hand to hand with design. They complement each other.

Allison: Well every painting I see involves a figure, you seem to have two completely different styles, one being realistic and the other being almost cartoon like or, loose. When I look at your design work, I don’t see any evidence of a figure.

Heather: Yeah, I love painting people, I think they are the most interesting creatures on this planet, full of unexplainable emotion, and to capture the emotion of a person and transfer it on to canvas is what I strive for the most. I want the viewer to feel what the figure is feeling. It’s a challenge. I guess design is a good field for me because it is the ability to evoke a certain emotion from the client/audience. So even though my designs don’t have people in it, the design itself is MADE for a person or people. That is where I see the connection between my paintings and my designs.

Allison: For your paintings: do you have any preference for materials? For your designs: Do you have a preference of style?

Heather: I usually paint in oil and sometimes acrylic. As far as design, I am interested in mostly typography even though I’m not a master at it. I’m obviously still learning, but type is what intrigues me the most because it’s having to portray an idea without the use of an image.

Allison: So it is safe to say that your theme is people, and their emotions and dispositions?

Heather: Yeah I guess that could be a theme. I don’t know really. I’m still working on it. I don’t really think of a theme when I’m making my work, I just go for it.

Allison: Do you have any influences for your work? Painting or design?

Heather: Definitely! I love Elizabeth Peyton which is why many of my “loose” paintings that you mentioned before are painted in that fashion. I was inspired by her ability to tell a story, and obviously the technicality of her work. I love the molding paste and gesso background to create a luminosity that you can’t get any other way. Oh, and David Kassan, he is a painter I saw in Chelsea once, his work is so amazing! He creates life sized photo realistic paintings of people with really subtle emotions. When you stand in front of his paintings you almost get uncomfortable because of how large scale they are. It is an amazing experience. I don’t really have inspiration for design, or maybe I have too much inspiration that I can’t pinpoint one person. I read Design Observer regularly which gives me a lot of ideas for design. I respect all designers, I am open to everything.

Allison: That’s awesome, do you have any ideas for your thesis?

Heather: Oh God, thesis. No. I really don’t think I do. I hope I’m not the only one who doesn’t have an idea. Well, I was kind of thinking that I could create a fake business and design all of the letterhead, posters, business cards and everything else for the business. Or I was thinking to create a portrait of a person using design. For example, I have a friend who is absolutely obsessed with celebrity gossip. She lives, sleeps, and breathes celebrity gossip, especially scandals. I was thinking about getting road signs and maybe installing them in the gallery space and I would plaster the road signs with pictures of celebrities rather than the actual road signs because my friend is a horrible driver and her attention is constantly on her addiction to celebrity gossip and scandals rather than the real world. So maybe I do have an idea or two, but I don’t know how well they would work out.

Chelsea Gallery Visit

Oh Chelsea, how many more times is Mason Gross going to assign visits to you. Wasn't 50 required visits enough for one semester? It sure was for me.

Mitchell, Innes & Nash, 534 W 26th- Enoc Perez: Perez’s work consists of architectural paintings, usually oil on paper. His style of painting was somewhat loose but still realistic and very recognizable. The canvas was weathered and looked distressed which was an interesting aspect to his work. His palette is interesting; it is almost like there is a color filter over some of his paintings. For example Perez chooses to keep the palette for the Swiss Re building in London in hues of blue. The gallery space itself was interesting and almost distracting. Depending on where you stood, the columns in the middle of the space could be an obstruction of your view, or used to help the eye focus on single pieces of work. The size of the work was perfect. I feel like his work was very calculated because of how you could see where he taped off sections to keep the ink or paint “neat” I always thought that if someone painted architecture than he or she finds the beauty in the idea of being mathematical and calculated (just the architecture of what they are painting)

Lehmann Maupin Gallery, 540 W 26th- Juergen Teller: Juergen Teller’s photos were almost insipid. They were not very appealing to me. What was most exciting about this work is that Teller had access to Louvre and was able to photograph his subjects in such a prominent museum. His photographs of two nude females in the Louvre standing next to famous statues and pieces of art lacked excitement due to their dull poses and straight forward photography which made for some uninteresting pictures.

Robert Miller Gallery- 524 W 26th- Barthelemy Toguo: There was way too much going on in one gallery space to make this show enjoyable. Although the work was separated into different rooms, the abundance and assortment of photographs and videos versus watercolors and installations made this show too much to take in. Not only was there a ridiculous about of work, but the political statement Toguo was trying to make was definitely made many times over which added to the predictability of the work.

Alex Bag Video

I watched this video and couldn’t help but get aggravated. The stereotypical ranting of this girl is the reason why I never tell people that I go to art school. I understand that this is supposed to be a parody of an art school student’s journey through SVA, but this girl is exactly what people fathom in their mind when you tell them you know someone who goes to art school (or that you go to art school). I also understand that the video was supposed to be humorous, but it wasn’t for me. I had a friend watch the video with me, she is a high school English teacher, and she said this to me: “Why are art students so weird? It’s like they are trying to be different so they don’t have to deal with the criticism of society.” I’m going to have to agree with her statement. I guess I differ from other art students because I don’t do it as a hobby. I went to school to become a graphic designer because I am choosing this as a CAREER. I am not here to change the world using art; I am here to make a living in the field of graphic design. Kudos to those who want to change other people’s perspective of the world by painting odd pictures, or making videos like Alex Bag, but that’s not the reason why I chose to be in artist. A Lot of people overlook the fact that being an artist takes talent. Nowadays everyone calls themselves artists by painting ridiculous abstract forms on a canvas, but I wonder how many of them can paint like the old masters like Rembrandt. Probably only a handful, the rest waste their time making videos like Alex Bag.

New Museum

The New Museum is an interesting building, the architecture is beautiful. However, the museum is more for aesthetic purposes than for functionality. The top floor is a sky room which overlooks I believe the south side of the city. I didn’t enjoy the exhibits nearly as much as I did in other museums or galleries in Chelsea. However, David Goldblatt’s photography was something that caught my attention. I have never done photography but I admire those that do. I read about his experience in South Africa and his photographs so beautifully reflect his experience. I really liked his photo of a landscape with a tiny person jumping off of the bridge. It was a detail that one could have missed if they weren’t paying attention. Goldblatt’s work is something I can really appreciate. He brought the viewer right into his work. Breathtaking. The artist Emory Douglass on the next floor was radically different. I found his exhibit to be monotonous. After the first couple illustrations I understood the whole idea of the Black Panther propaganda. After looking at a couple of them, I didn’t really need to see any more. His message was simple and easy to understand which made the exhibit boring to me.