ARTIST STATEMENT
I am a Southern Feminist artist. I make connections and objects with this dichotomy. There is no rising from within, or successful navigation of, the dense social strata of New Orleans without nuance; no disconnecting it from its layers of codes, so often infinitely switched merely to move through it; no singular unsophisticated examination of a timeless place, where incremental change amounts to upheaval. Through my art, women have charted this history, as it is their very own, redefining themselves in a place that cordons them into a particular place in society.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Heather Weathers was born in Metairie, Louisiana 1971. She attended the New Orleans Center for Creative Art, combining mixed media and contemporary ideas. After graduating from NOCCA, Heather earned her BFA at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, pursuing performance art, painting and ceramic art, and in 1994 she performed in a New Orleans Industrial band called Gimp. Heather earned her MFA from Pratt Institute in 1998, combining her feminist views, multi media materials and performance art in a piece involving a bikini made out of meat called “Sweet Meat” in 2001.
After graduating, Heather started a series of multiple site art programs in Brooklyn, New York. She still creates art curriculum. She exhibited with the feminist group Soho 20 and The Exhibitionists. Heather Weathers currently exhibits her contemporary work through out the United States. In 2007 Heather Weathers was recognized by the ACLU foundation of Louisiana as a defender of civil liberties . She is an active member of the Women’s Caucus for Art, the New Orleans Photo Alliance and Second Story Gallery. Weathers supports the National Organization of Women. She donates art work often to benefit women’s rights. She lives and works in New Orleans, Louisiana.
You can find her work in the following collections: McNeese State University, Louisiana; Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan; Museum of Menstruation, Maryland; The New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana; New York Body Archive, New York and Florida.
© Heather Weathers