Anna hepler biography
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Anna Hepler: Borrowed Light
In a recent conversation with Anna, I asked her what she would like to do next, thinking her answer might inform her work in the current exhibition. “I don’t know,” she said, “I’ve always wanted to know more about death and dying and supporting or witnessing this process.” It was an unexpected and vulnerable response, direct and unadorned. It felt as if the curtain of some interior window had been opened, allowing what the Shakers call “borrowed light” to illuminate a part of Anna I had never seen.
I was driving across the country, somewhere in western Nebraska, with hours and hours to contemplate her revelation. Grasslands undulated into the distance, the front range of the Rockies rose into the first stars, and in the miles that followed her response I found myself filling with a certain awe at how it enriched the way I view her work and, for that matter, Anna herself. And now, a day later, as I sit on the north rim of Canyon de Chelly, I am again
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Exhibitions > Anna Hepler: Intricate Universe
Montserrat Gallery
August 22 – October 17, 2009
New Engand Art Award: Best Solo Show by a Local Artist
Portland-based artist Anna Hepler uses simple materials to create sophisticated prints, drawings, and elaborate three-dimensional spatial constructs. Over the past five years her artistic obsession with the movement of particles suspended in space has taken on impressive proportions. Sources of inspiration include ephemeral natural phenomena such as flocks of birds, fireworks, dandelion whorls. She combines this with an interest in skeletal frameworks either from the natural or built environment. Says Hepler, “I am interested in portraying fleeting moments of suspended or built geometries.” By combining visually cohesive forms, such as the oval or the sphere, and filling them with chaotic structures, Hepler takes on the duality she sees in nature’s systems. The resulting installation is incredibly elegant and filled with
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Anna Hepler
Anna Hepler is based in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Her work, which is both hand-held and architectural in scale, overturns first impressions – wire forms flatten into drawings, clay impersonates metal, plywood coils like rope, plastic inhales, and exhales. Hepler values embarrassment, uncertainty, blunder, and fragility as active agents in her studio process.
Biography
A former Henry Luce Foundation fellow in Seoul, South Korea, Hepler has completed residencies at the Roswell Artist-In-Residence program, Tamarind Institute, Nova Scotia College of Art & Design, Archie Bray Foundation, Surf Point Foundation, Montello Foundation, and MacDowell. In 2016 she was awarded a fellowship bygd United States Artists, and more recently has received support from the Harpo Foundation, Nancy Graves Foundation, Gottlieb Foundation, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She has exhibited widely, and her work can be found in the collections of the National galleri of A