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Website: heather-mackenzie.com

Heather MacKenzie is an artist, writer, and educator from suburban Detroit, MI. In her work, Heather looks to the textile as a foundational piece of human technology that is sensual and material while simultaneously embedded with complex mathematical information. In two- and three-dimensional work, as well as performance, she examines other, equally foundational systems that span the material world and the abstract one: platonic mathematics, Euclidean geometry, and standardized measurement. Last year, Heather acted as the Fountainhead Fellow in Craft and Material Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. During the previous academic year of 2014-15, Heather was a Fulbright Fellow in Paris, France, where she produced work and had a solo installation as artist-in-residence at l’École des Arts Décoratifs. She has studied traditional textiles in Ecuador, Ghana, India, Zimbabwe, as well as in Europe, and she has exhibited work recently at venues including the Mission Gallery and Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago, and PointDom in Toulouse, France. Heather received her BA from Brown University and her MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Recent Work

: Compressed Reflections (installation shot) Compressed Reflections: solo show of textile works at Sediment Gallery, Richmond, VA.

: Deep-Sea Oil Prospects, Northern Gulf of Mexico #5 (Salt Pillow) Year: 2016 Materials: Amoco-donated polyolefin, cotton, synthetic dye, steel Size: 22′ x 10′

: Diamond-Square_Algorithm: Four Extrapolations Year: 2016 Materials: cotton, Lexan Size: variable – 28″ x 28″ (smallest panel) to 102″ x 108″ (largest panel)

: Recursion Year: 2016 Materials: cotton, silk, Lexan Size: 16″ x 11″

: Quadratics #1, #2, & #3 Year: 2016 Materials: cotton, rayon, Lexan Size: 9″ x 11″ (each)

: Unit “Feu” Year: 2015 Medium: Wool, polyester, cotton, and reprinted books Size: Variable, installation This work was produced through a Fulbright Scholarship in France, and this is documentation of its installation at Galerie PointDom in Toulouse, France

: Unit “Feu” (installation detail) Year: 2015 Medium: Wool, polyester, paper Size: 2.4m x 10m (bolt of cloth), 40cm x 1m (book) Hanging in the foreground is a textile whose woven structures transcoded a portion of Emilie du Chatelet’s manuscript “A Dissertation on Fire”. On the wall behind is the dissected manuscript of Voltaire on the same topic.

: Unit “Feu” (installation detail) Year: 2015 Medium: Paper, cotton, polyester Size: 15cm x 18cm (book); 1m x 1m (tape measure) Here again is Emilie du Chatelet’s text “Dissertation on Fire”, with pairs of pages woven together in a simple twill.

: Geometries of the Loom Year: 2015 Medium: Cotton, mohair, polyester Size: 34″ x 34″ Made by weaving 4 layers of fabric simultaneously on a dobby loom

: Geometries of the Loom Year: 2014 Medium: Silk Size: 18″ x 20″ Made by weaving 12 layers of fabric simultaneously on a dobby loom

: Fathom Squared in 100m Year: 2014 Medium: Cotton, polyester, sewing pins Size: 6′ x 6′ Handwoven tape measure 100m in length, depicting inches on one side of the cloth and centimeters on the other

: Fathom Squared in 100m (detail) Year: 2014 Medium: Cotton, polyester, sewing pins Size: 6′ x 6′ Detail image

: Deep-Sea Oil Prospects, Northern Gulf of Mexico Year: 2014 Medium: Surplus polyolefin donated by Amoco, cotton, steel Size: 10′ x 4.5′ Seismic cross‑section from the Northern Gulf of Mexico, depicting a space that plunges more than 11,000 feet below the ocean floor

: Deep-Sea Oil Prospects, Northern Gulf of Mexico Year: 2014 Medium: Surplus polyolefin donated by Amoco, cotton, steel Size: 10′ x 4.5′ Detail image

: Seismic Line Year: 2013 Medium: Surplus Amoco-‐‑donated polyolefin, cotton, steel Size: 10.5′ x 5′ Here the layers of cloth are woven together along the scale, which acts as a point of entry to understand the textile as a map, and simultaneously as a point of confusion by obscuring and gather the fabric at that point

: Deep-Sea Oil Prospects, Northern Gulf of Mexico #4 (Salt Diapirs) Year: 2014 Medium: Surplus Amoco-donated polyolefin, cotton, steel cable Size: 10′ x 9.5′ Here I use an algorithm to vary the density of the warp, creating the vertical bars

: Seismic Mound Year: 2013 Medium: Surplus Amoco-donated polyolefin, cotton, steel Size: 6′ x 6′ x 1′ Woven as three layers of cloth on the loom, but pinned together into one layer along the geologic mound depicted, the textile becomes sculptural

: Moiré Year: 2014 Medium: Surplus Amoco-donated polyolefin, cotton, steel Size: 10′ x 4.5′ A photograph of a moiré translated onto a textile becomes an invented landscape

: FATHOM (installation shot) Year: 2013 Medium: Discarded acrylic sweaters, wood, aluminum, steel Size: variable Installation at Mission Gallery in Chicago, IL

: FATHOM (installation shot) Year: 2013 Medium: Discarded acrylic sweaters, wood, aluminum, steel Size: variable Installation at Mission Gallery in Chicago, IL

: Unit “Feu” (installation at the School of Decorative Arts) Year: 2015 Medium: Earth, paper, wool, polyester Size: Installation Using earth that I excavated from the grounds of the Bureau of Weights and Measures, I created a scale floorplan of its principal building with the altered manuscripts of Emilie du Chatelet and of Voltaire appropriately occupying the chemistry lab.

: Acrylic, 100-yard takes Year: 2013 Medium: Digital photo Size: variable Here I document my recuperation of acrylic yarn from discarded sweaters; each frame documents 100 yards of reclaimed material.

: Tesselation Year: 2013 Medium: Cotton, polyolefin Size: 8″ x 8″ This is a materialization of a tesselation I created using the program Mathematica

FATHOM This video is documentation from a six-hour performance that took place during a month-long exhibition.

FATHOM is a bodily investigation into acrylic fibers and their petroleum roots.

: For Penelope This video loops the unraveling (and regrowth) of the hem of an acrylic sweater.