Solo Exhibition February 1, 2014 – March 9, 2014
In “Suburban Mythology” Andrea Joyce Heimer documents the neighborhood mythos of her childhood home in 1980′s Great Falls, Montana. Adopted as an infant and plagued by lifelong clinical depression, Heimer struggled early-on with feeling disconnected from her family and community. Her sense of isolation only increased with adolescence, and Heimer began to battle her loneliness by means of observation. With her bicycle and ponytail as camouflage, she blended seamlessly into the suburban landscape and became an all-seeing, all-listening, all-recording witness to the people and events that defined the history of this small piece of suburbia. Heimer was fascinated by the dramas she became privy to–the mundane mixed with supernatural, the violence and the kink–nearly Shakespearean in their breadth. Now residing far from her Montana roots, Heimer pays homage to the sagas whose presence made her complicated youth more bearable — and also offers a tip of her hat to the strange histories unfolding in suburban neighborhoods everywhere, in hopes each area finds its own witnesses to record the stories that may otherwise be lost forever.
Andrea Joyce Heimer (b. 1981) is a self taught painter who now lives in Washington state, where she trains jumping horses in the summer. She has not been back to her childhood home of Great Falls, Montana (the city’s claim to fame: the site of the first UFO recorded on film in 1950), though thinks of it often. She began painting the “Suburbia” body of work in March 2012. Her paintings live in private collections in the US and abroad, including the collection of musician Paul Simon. Heimer was recently one of three finalists for the Seattle’s prestigious Neddy Award in the painting category.
