FIRST LOOK/mixed media
Heather Hart: Carpentry, Drawing, Social Practice Heather Hart describes her work as coming from a position of the in-between. “I love the slippage between a story I tell and what my listener hears,” she says. “I hope to create work that questions the idea of a singular read and asks visitors to take an active role in the art viewing process through participation.” Her audiences aren’t just invited to view her drawings, but often to participate in their creation, and to not just walk around her installations— like the “Western Oracle,” the roofline of a large, craftsmanlooking house jutting out of the ground in Seattle’s Sculpture Park as if a whole house were buried underneath—but to play music on the roof and climb in the windows. Her viewers can even have a hand in the building, rooting her art in the craft that inspired it. “Like traditional carpentry,” she says, “I always build with a team.” In a collaboration with the artist Jina Valentine, Hart has co-created The Black Lunch Table, a traveling series of dialogues with local black artists and the community at large rooted in their observation that in public settings like school cafeterias, black students can tend to self-segregate. “We sit together,” she says, among many reasons, “because we share common backgrounds, face common challenges, and because we have a vested interest in our communal wellbeing.” An extension of the Black Lunch Table, the BLT Wikipedia Hackathon, is a research and writing project that seeks to help communities like ours bring visibility to their artists of color by fleshing out their biographies on Wikipedia. Hart will show a selection of drawings and have a Wikipedia hacking kiosk set-up at the Terrain Gallery (304 W. Pacific) throughout March. The gallery is open from 4-7 p.m. Thursday and Friday and 1-7 p.m. Satruday. You can view Hart’s work online at heather-hart.com.
Terrain is a nonprofit dedicated to creating a more beautiful, vibrant and just Inland Northwest by building community and creating economic opportunities for our region’s artists and culture creators and by increasing access to and participation in the arts. Head to their website, terrainspokane.com to learn more about their programs, sign up for the newsletter and to find out how you can help. Follow them on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @terrainspokane.
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spokanecda.com / MARCH 2017