Heather Watkins

Heather Watkins employs a process-oriented, materials-based methodology to create powerful installations. Exploring systems first practiced by Dada artists in the early 20th century, she engages physical and psychic phenomena such as flow, stasis, circulation, time, and the limits of sensory perception to produce an elegant body of work. Her APEX exhibition features black-on-black drawings, ink blot drawings on Japanese Kozo-shi paper, artist’s books, and semi-rigid, ink-impregnated fiber sculptures that express the evocative nature and sensory experience created by manipulating linear forms. Her process intuitively harnesses accident to produce many of her compositions. Watkins’ work is experimental and fresh while taking inspiration from the non-representational tradition of 20th-century Modernists, as well as calligraphic drawings and sumi ink paintings from Eastern Asia.

APEX is an ongoing series of exhibitions of Northwest-based artists, curated by Bonnie Laing-Malcolmson, The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Northwest Art. Supported in part by the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Endowments for Northwest Arts and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.