NEWS
2021Maryland State Arts Council
$10K Independent Artist Award recipient
The Thin Place - Academy Art Museum
Exhibition August -October 2019
The Thin Place, is a Celtic term for locations with heightened permeability, where divides between living and dead, heaven and earth, commonplace and other worldly seem to collapse and coexist. Harvey expands that historical meaning to include any transitional space or period of indeterminacy. Her studio practice includes night walks to collect trash inadvertently left by others; what she calls “urban beachcombing.” These materials, regarded by most as worthless and unsightly, are incorporated in order to draw out their inherent significance, beauty, and strangeness. This will be the first exhibition of her work within the community where most of her materials were gathered.
Press Release
Academy Art Museum - Artists and a Global Pandemic
The Academy Art Museum introduces Virtual Studio: Conversations with Artists, a new outreach effort that highlights how artists are rising to the challenge of a global pandemic, conceptually and practically. Through written and audiovisual dialogue, participating artists are asked to describe what form their creative practice has taken under quarantine, and what they are presently working on. The conversations serve both as a celebration and a record of their work and insights at this historic moment.
Watch the first video in the series as we asked Heather Harvey, Artist and Associate Professor of Visual Art at Washington College, what it is like to produce work during the pandemic.
FAculty in Focus - Washington College Review
Washington College Review interviewed me about my work, and the role writing plays in my creative practice and my teaching.
Excerpt:
WCR: In order to write and communicate well, what do students need to do? What are some principles or characteristics of effective writing and related forms of communication in the arts that you emphasize in your courses?
HH: I am drawn to honesty, directness, and authenticity; saying what you mean. At the same time, powerful writing doesn’t need to be journalistically accurate or materially “true.” Great writing, like great visual art, is often elusive, contradictory, unprovable, absurdist or speculative, yet still with an air of truth. It possesses a distinctive voice or perspective that, even if fabricated or imagined, is so well-considered it can’t possibly be trivial.
Remake/Remodel - Salisbury University
Exhibition September - October 2018
Excerpt from Curatorial statement by Tara Gladden and Elizabeth Kaufman:
REMAKE/REMODEL includes two artists that work with waste materials in very different ways. Robson offers a colorful, harmonious view that aims to harness and transform the parts of our world that are dissonant or neglected. Her work engages in environmental activism by building awareness of issues surrounding plastic waste and its implications for the planet and human race. Heather Harvey’s work takes a darker, grittier tone and functions as a poetic expression of her feelings about the current state of the country. She uses trash and plants collected on her daily walks as a metaphor to represent capitalistic tendencies and creates 2 environments that comment on the political issues of our time. Both are very serious approaches and imaginative uses of waste material that wake us up, shake us up, and prompt us to consider our role in the world. By remaking and remodeling waste to form these artworks, both artists remind us that no matter how difficult the process, change is possible with fearless imagination and commitment.
2017 Recipient of MSAC Individual Artist Award - Sculpture
Artist Spotlight: Second Street Gallery
Second Street Gallery in Charlottesville, interviewed me for the solo exhibition there, “Periodicities in Chaotic Forcing.”
SSG Artist Podcast - Interview
Second Street Gallery talks to Heather Harvey about work, on view at SSG in March 2016.