People

Works by: Heather Yells

Heather Yells paints maps with eggs, walnut oil, beeswax, dirt, clay and rocks, on paper, wood and rocks.

"God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy." - Billy Currington

Heather completed her degree in Visual Arts and Design in 2010, she had previously worked as a gardener. Another gardener (Henry David Thoreau) said “to be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts but to so love wisdom as to live according to its dictates; a life of simplicity, magnanimity and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life not only theoretically but practically.”

Heathers art investigates alternatives to the current dictatorial western paradigm in relation to concern for the earth and its inhabitants. Heathers art endeavors to create connections based on kindness and consideration between her works, the environment, the audience and herself.

Heather is a cartographer and composer, exploring dialogical and collaborative modalities. The notions inherent in maps and music (relationship, connections, exploration, tone, rhythm, melody, harmony, dissonance, silence and sound) are an ideal vehicle to deliver the aforementioned aspirations. As American pragmatist Richard Rorty said, “disengagement from practice produces theoretical hallucinations” mapping actual locations and applying musical principles to do so keeps it real.

To produce maps of locations with materials gathered from those locations, to interact with geographies, not merely observations, but to be in it and of it. The idea that our lives could be lived as art. These maps are frameworks within which discoveries can be proposed. The quotidian is expressed in the vernacular. To share these experiences, experiments, explorations. Simple pleasures are embedded within mapping notions.

Heather paints, and the painting paints her. Mapping with music helps her find her way.