open studio

open studio: a voice crying in the wilderness /  by kelly heaton

A voice crying in the wilderness.  Digital photo collage (sketch), 2016.  Kelly Heaton

Human population is skyrocketing along with our impact on planet earth: smog, loss of natural habitat, loss of diversity, global spread of invasive pests, deforestation, exploitation of natural resources, landfills, toxic waste, garbage in the ocean, death of coral reefs, pesticides everywhere, crowded cities, escalating competition for resources, drought, soil erosion, ... the list goes on. Because our numbers are so many, even small or unintended actions add up to a big problem: eating seafood or beef, burning wood or coal, drinking bottled water, disposable packaging, pissing medication into the water supply, driving a car, and so on.  A manmade solution to population growth is not obvious, which is to say, no ethical solution has materialized.  It appears that we are on a collision-course with nature's solution to excessive population: death by bottleneck.  Surely there is an alternative.  Surely we can all agree to be a little more reasonable, if that means to save our kind?  Or are our natural instincts to reproduce, and to compete for resources, so strong that we cannot save ourselves?

open studio: harbingers /  by kelly heaton

Harbingers, 2015.  Digital photo-collage.  Kelly Heaton

Consumerism, pollution, dependence on fossil fuels, e-waste, climate change, off-shore garbage disposal, inequity of access to Earth's basic natural resources, manmade illness, children raised in ecological poverty, living conditions for future earthlings, the heaven that is natural Earth ...

open studio: a young woman with her phone /  by kelly heaton

A young woman with her phone.  Digital photo collage.  Kelly Heaton, 2015

An artifact of the Anthropocene era: a young woman with her phone.  Artists used to sculpt marble statues from a live model, often a woman of ill repute. Now, artists model statues in Photoshop using pictures of women who post themselves on the Internet.  For the record, I made my "statue" from a composite of several women, so it does not represent a real person.

open studio: selfie on the raft of medusa /  by kelly heaton

Selfie on the Raft of Medusa, 2015. Digital photo collage. Kelly Heaton

I made this photo-collage, "Selfie on the Raft of Medusa," 2015, after Theodore Gericault's epic painting, "The Raft of the Medusa," 1818-1819. Gericault portrays the hastily constructed life raft of the Medusa, a French naval frigate that wrecked in 1816 killing most of her crew and creating an uproar over the perceived incompetence of the French monarchy. It's one of the greatest paintings in history. 

Joseph Campbell attributes the myth of Medusa to "an actual historic rupture, a sort of sociological trauma, which has been registered in this myth, much as what Freud terms the latent content of a neurosis is registered in the manifest content of a dream: registered yet hidden, registered in the unconscious yet unknown or misconstrued by the conscious mind."

Medusa: rage of the feminine principle. She speaks to me right now. She speaks of frustration with human self-absorption, abuse of Mother Earth, dependence on fossil fuels and electricity, and hubris.

Jack London quotes Benjamin de Casseres in 1914: "The profoundest instinct in man is to war against the truth; that is, against the Real. He shuns facts from his infancy. His life is a perpetual evasion. Miracle, chimera and to-morrow keep him alive. He lives on fiction and myth. It is the Lie that sets him free."

open studio: garden bodhisattva (tomatoes) /  by kelly heaton

A garden bodhisattva as seen in my last summer's tomato plants.  Watercolor, ink, brass, clay, acrylic and vines on joined paper (with a rigid backing), 53" x 38" x 4", 2013 - 2015
Below are two details of the sculptural surface.