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For British-born artist Sandra Jane Heard, the Midwest’s industrial history is an important element of her new show, Rust Belt Muse, at River Arts Gallery in Perrysburg.
“I chose the title to pay tribute to my locale and the place that I hold dear as the stirring force for my creativity to re-emerge,” Heard said. “I have always been interested in the space and tension between beauty and ugliness, strength and fragility, birth and decay, rise and decline. This area exists within that space, a former industrial power battered and weathered by time, but still exhibiting hints of its former self and offering a simmering chance of renewal.”
The artist views her work as an exploration of a complicated universe that pits current society against the preservation of nature. The destructive relationship between man and nature plays into greater themes in her work, which include the passage of time, nature’s beauty, exploitation, suffering, and renewal. “My main concern is for the environment. My work creates a narrative that shows a cautionary tale about man’s intrusion on the earth. The art has a playful but sinister edge to it. My aim is to connect nature with the human experience.”
A sense of renewal
In keeping with her ecologically conscientious ideas, she painstakingly combines damaged or discarded items with eco-friendly materials showing humanity’s impact on the environment, with the potential of renewal.
“The found vintage objects add a nostalgic quality that connects the work with the past,” Heard said. “I see them as offering a sense of renewal by now inhabiting a reinvented present. I create my works from a diverse palette of collected natural and man-made materials, such as silk yarn, sisal, reeds, paper and found objects. I favor relatable, everyday materials that have been damaged and marred by time. To me, that aids in conveying the infliction of time and experience on the body and mind. My aesthetic is drawn to the imperfect rather than the refined, to fragility rather than strength, and to the common rather than the ideal.”
Heard’s work is highly innovative; “Through the process of experimenting, manipulating and editing, the work begins to take form. It enters a cycle of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction,” She added. “My new works investigate this tenuous tightrope we are walking along in regards to our exploitive relationship with nature, complicated further by constant human conflicts and competition for power and resources.”
Sandra Jane Heard’s simple forms of intricate construction aesthetically convey the metamorphosis and evolution of both the modern and natural world.
There will be a tour and artist talk on Thursday, May 29 at 7pm. “Rust Belt Muse: New Work
by Sandra Jane Heard” runs through Friday, June 27. River Arts Gallery, 115 W. Front Street,
Perrysburg. 419-874-8900.
river-house-arts.com
