Sally Heller is a multi-material based artist who creates recognizable yet improbable landscapes constructed from cultural detritus. A modern-day bricoleur, savvy cultural hacker and urban archaeologist, Heller assembles a litany of mundane materials and cultural castoffs into recognizable yet improbable environments that cleverly fuse macro and micro, architectural and organic, artifice and nature. Fully aware of the central, and often
contradictory, importance of mass culture and its relationship to contemporary art, she is far more interested in the literal connection between her materials and the context in which they are being deployed.
Heller builds site specific installations which are temporary and from those she fashions permanent photographic works. Assemblage is another medium which Heller is currently exploring
Permanent sculptures include a public sculpture installed in downtown New Orleans, funded by a 2008 Joan Mitchell grant and a stainless steel sculpture commissioned by a private collector. She has been awarded
residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts, San Francisco, Civitella Ranieri, Umbertide, Italy, the Vermont Studio School, Johnson, Vermont and Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY. She holds a BS from University of Wisconsin and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Her work has been exhibited at the Lawndale Art Center, Houston, the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, Depauw University, Indianna, Whitespace Gallery, Atlanta, Montserrat College of Art, Massachusetts, , Miami University,Oxford, Ohio, Ohio State University, Athens, Ohio, Kemper Fine Art, New York city, Louisiana Museum of Science and Art, Baton Rouge, Moore College of Art, PA and Scope, Miami. Recently she had a solo show at Memphis University Art Gallery and at Tulane University, both
where she worked with art students. In the fall, she will have a one person show at the George Ohr Museum.
You may also like
