ARTIST STATEMENT
Through the intimate lens of my own life I examine issues of race and whiteness, gender and sexuality, trauma and abuse. I have been transfixed with how to create a visceral understanding of experience through objects. Creating objects and environments that conjure connections to the past from family histories, colonial legacies to religious traditions. Using the materiality of craft as a mode of softening, I ask you to lean in confronting alarming truths. I have addressed white women’s roles in white supremacy through my art series, Whitework and through hosting anti-racism workshops for white women with Confront White Womanhood. I am working on a new series of altar cabinets, that reveal embroidered scenes telling my story of relationship trauma and recovery. Invoking the timeless visual languages of religious iconography, folk art and fairy tales, my practice speaks to the truth of the past and present.
Works by © Heather Marie Scholl
Heather Marie Scholl is an embroidery and mixed artist and educator living and working in Brooklyn, NY. She holds a BA in Race, Gender and Sexuality and an MFA in Fashion and Knitwear Design. Her inaugural installation, Sometimes It’s Hard to be a Woman, was awarded a Brooklyn Arts Council Grant in 2014. The James and Janie Washington Residency 2019 in Seattle, WA served as a sounding board for the development of her current series, an untitled book project. She was a 2019-20 fellow with the Leslie-Lohman Museum Artist Fellowship. In 2015 Scholl began an exploration into white women’s roles in white supremacy through her series, Whitework. This work lead her to co-founding Confront White Woman, anti-racism education for white women, a program she now directs. Scholl’s work has been exhibited at The Morris Jumel Mansion, the oldest colonial house in Manhattan, Rokeby Museum in Ferrisburg, VT, Virago Gallery in Seattle, WA and Hive Gallery in L.A, among others. Her work has been written about in i-D magazine, Cosmopolitan, Slate, The Huffington Post and BUST.
Artist Website: www.heathermariescholl.com