Heidi Bartlett

Potentiality. The potential of the subconscious and of objects. Hubris, humility, physicality, myth, literature, the psyche, and scientific processes inform my creation. I want to create freely and express the importance of the individual and community, a transformation of the normal, abnormal, and fantasy. Joseph Beuys’ transformation of substance, art that is always in process, is a concept that keeps me in flux, resolution against tension. I want to create with the intentions of social sculpture.

SOCIAL SCULPTURE - how we mold or shape the world in which we live: Sculpture is an evolutionary process; everyone is an artist. That is why the nature of my sculpture is not fixed and finished. Processes continue in most of them: chemical reactions, fermentations, color changes, decay, drying up. Everything is in a state of change.  

Beuys’ statement reinforces my interest in community and flux spaces. I humbly accept that my ideas, objects, and performances cannot materialize or mutate without struggling against resistance in the process. In this struggle I find harmony, the balance between intellect and instinct. In the spaces between birth and decay, human and animal, I draw and cut lines.

BIO-
Heidi Wiren Bartlett is an Interdisciplinary artist, teacher, amateur dancer and taxidermist living and working in Iowa City. She received her BFA at Concordia University in Seward, NE and now is an MFA candidate in Intermedia and Drawing at the University of Iowa. Bartlett investigates the potential of environments as conduits for performance and drawing. Paper, wood, animal artifacts and architecture create the framework for her performances. She explores the line that runs through all things; revealing relationships between our body and its surroundings. Within this landscape she is interested in marks, light, movement, ritual and the dialog between our symbolic and animal selves.

Visit the artists website at:
http://cargocollective.com/hbartlett