Special to the Sun
“Interologies,” a solo exhibition by Susan Heideman, opens Oct. 3 at Laconia Gallery, 433 Harrison Avenue, in the SOWA district of Boson’s South End. The show is curated by James Hull and runs through the Closing Party on Saturday, Nov. 22.
Heideman makes large, hand-embroidered oils on stretched canvas, and hand-embroidered watercolor collages on paper. Her love of the natural world and interest in science have inspired this body of “hybrid” stitched works. The entities she conjures live outside nature’s taxonomies. But these intermixed scenarios represent only one sort of hybridity in the work; another is the optical hybridity that results from stitching through thick oil paint or into watercolor collages. With the varied weights of yarns and threads a new tactile topography emerges. “Interologies” is a neologism she coined for the title of this exhibition.
As Heideman says in her artist’s statement, “We live in many worlds: inside/outside; plant/animal; natural/supernatural. In my work I’m drawn to the borders between these realms, where mobile entities fly, hurl, creep, or ride geyser-like spouts; where filmy or fluid substances penetrate thick solid planes; where auras sprout and retract. I think of the abstract hybrids that result as “in-betweens,” entities that live in the lines separating taxonomy, realm, and condition…”
Heideman is a Smith College Professor Emerita who taught painting and drawing for thirty-six years while maintaining her studio practice in Boston where she continues to work and live. She has works in permanent collections: Smith College Museum, Danforth Museum of Art at Framingham State University, Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University, Boston College’s McMullen Museum of Art, DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Boston Public Library Collection of Prints and Drawings, and The William and Uytendal Collection of Works by Women Artists at Bryn Mawr College. Her works are represented in numerous corporate collections and she has had exhibits up and down the East Coast in both commercial and non-profit galleries.
“Interologies” opens with a First Friday celebration, Oct. 3, from 6-8 p.m. The Gallery will be open the First Friday, Nov. 7, from 6-8 pm, as well as Sunday afternoons in October from 1 – 4 p.m., and by appointment (contact [email protected]). A Closing Party will conclude the exhibition on Nov. 22 from 1- 4 p.m. A panel discussion, :Hybridity,” is scheduled for Sunday, Nov. 2, at 2 p.m.
For further information, visit the Laconia Gallery website at laconiagallery.com.