Heather Beardsley
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    • Distorted Depths
    • Strange Plants, Textiles
    • Strange Plants, Embroidered Photos
    • Strange Plants, Boxes
  • 2019
    • Folding City
    • Shangyuan Art Residency
    • Once I Had...
  • 2018
    • Ectopic Anatomy
    • Fictive Fossils
    • Fiber Cyanotypes
  • 2017
    • Fabulatory Epistemology
    • Die Sammlung
    • Dissolving Grids
    • Here Be Dragons
    • Batiks
  • 2016
    • Mapping Migrations
  • 2015
    • Taxonomy
    • Institute for the Study of Fabulatory Epistemology and Fantasy Football
  • 2014
    • Lab Notebook
    • Continuous Drawing
  • 2013
    • Books
    • OCD Drawings
    • Specimen Vials
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Continuous Drawing

Picture
This drawing is built from pieces easily identifiable to the viewer as parts of human anatomy.  I then undermine this familiarity by altering the scale, relationships, and arrangement of these elements.  Like in the holistic viewpoint of the human body, the relationships and connections between the organs and miniature systems begin to take on more importance than the organs themselves. 

Searching for balance and understanding, there is no preconceived plan for what the finished product will look like.  Instead the drawing grows organically, replicating in a similar way to the cells that compose our bodies.  When approaching the edge of one sheet, another is added.  Sometimes the drawing sprawls quickly from one sheet of paper to another, other days it seems to fold back into itself as areas previously unrealized begin to take shape.  As I am drawing I am discovering these relationships more than I am creating them.  Using several sheets of paper as opposed to one large sheet has allowed me the freedom to let the act of drawing dictate the composition as a I build that also serves to augment the piecemeal nature of its content. 

 By directly addressing the scale of the wall the drawing becomes an installation. While the literal scale of the drawing will be large the proportions of the elements within it will remain compact, building up an intensity that gives the drawing the feeling of being alive.  The relative size of the overall drawing contrasted with the minute imagery it contains will draw the viewer into a world that normally exists only within the pages of a medical textbook or under the lens of a microscope.   Encompassing them in a mass of interlocking systems without any context or scientific explanation for how these parts function will overwhelm the spectator with its complexity and reiterate the incongruous nature of how the body functions.




Other Projects:


Institute for the Study of Fabulatory Epistemology and Fantasy Football
Continuous Installation

Lab Notebook
Specimen Vials
Muscle Wire Specimens
OCD Drawings
Model Magic Cultures
Frankensteinian Transfers