Personæ

Growing up in the lower laurentians in the 90s with an older brother, I was pretty well left to my own devices when it came to entertainment.  Yea, we had a tv, but this was pre-satellite and our town didn’t carry cable.  No one in my family was interested in video games, either, so it was the forest for us all.

Needless to say i had a pretty wild imagination.  powered by top 40 playlists on my clock radio, i would spend hours upon hours creating characters named after fonts and dressed up in the most outrageous outfits my mother would buy at church bazaars [took me forever to spell that right].  oh and the JEWELERY – the most fabulous gaudy stuff you’ve ever seen.  for every real life friend i was without, i would imagine 5 in their place.  yes, i was THAT child.  i was amazing, be jealous.

Fast forward 15 years, and i’m still listening to Dance Mix 96 [i’ve had a penchant for bad music since a very young age] [disco?! really?! really] and dividing my selves into smaller quantities, until i can grasp each character and quote, only to multiply once more.  it’s a very complex process of personae – but i’ve been doing this for years so i think i know what i’m doing.

You may or may not know me, but you probably have heard me refer to myself as ‘heather utah’ or ‘ilhu’ or something.  i was not born these people – but i did make them!  with a little help from my friends karen o, lady gaga, vince noir, alan vega, david bowie, and freddy mercury, i have finally established the ULTIMATE heather utah.

we muthafuckin know how to.  i call this series of  SPs ‘SHIT YEA’, because i’m feelin it, y0.

have some brutal macros.

stranger, softer.  the middle one looks like someone knocked my teeth out.  FABULOUS!

ILHU and caralee roman suits not shown [as they are not formally resolved yet].

now that ‘spring’ ‘break’ is here, its time to do some more ‘serious’ fiddling with audacity and my old school casio.  as much as heather j_ is inspired by music, i think heather utah is a noisician.

in other news :: i read my tarot last night – and my FAVOURITE card, the chariot, turned up again.  everything is going to be ok!

for those of you who don’t know – i recently lost someone very close to me and my biological family – but they are in a better place now, so i’m not too distraught.  i’m just very sad that they are not around anymore, they were a tremendously strong individual who will be dearly miss.  RIP my dear geraldine!

Hedronized Heathen

somewhere between structure and mark making is where i am sitting.

not quite something, but definitely not nothing, i’ve made my place. meditating on helminthophobia and geometry, i have found many different ways of researching the relationships of these ideas and methods in a way that is my own. for me, by me.

i know repetition. i know repetition. i know bravery, repetition and noise [anyone?].

this process of shuttling back and forth between the shape of the structure and the drawings inspired by the shapes formed by uncontrollable folding, pleating, and swearing was the most integral to the beginning of a creation of a real evolution. while i’m not quite there yet, and i’m still meddling with the definition of ‘artist’, this might be the closest i’ve come to it thus far. come to think of it, i say that a lot, so its definitely a process.

it all started with the introduction of modular origami to my life. i had never been interested in origami before, as the folding of insipid creatures out of paper never really appealed to me in a passionate way [not like the way crochet had / has]. but modular origami requires the intense repetition of folding the same shape – and that is something i fully know, understand, and appreciate from a structural / fibres background [knitting and crochet is ALL the repetition of the [almost] exact same action]. its the creation of small same units in order to create something larger – it is more than the sum of its parts.

well i certainly bit off more than i could chew making this disastrous tube. i wanted to create a worm / tube / monster, and that is exactly what happened. attaching each element to make a compound, then attaching compounds to compounds, my beast exploded into an extremely frustrating piece that i was not inspired at all to finish – also happens to be everyone’s favourite piece! of course. what a pain though – and the people sad when i took it apart at the end of the day, all i could think of was KILL IT KILL IT WITH FIRE [and not in the fun way]. i could not, cannot deal with the idea of it sitting in a corner of my studio, mocking me with its inherently evil intention [trying to externalize the worms, get them out, exorcize!]. its still in my bag. i cant even look at it right now.

[taken earlier this morning – its a hatful of hedra!]

these however, were an absolute BLAST to make. straight up and down hedra, it was a structure i could understand and track the evolution of my folding and insertion skills. i adapted the traditional PHiZZ style of folding into something i lovingly call ILhU style. 3 modules, 1 hexahedron. thats a structure i can get behind. can you believe these were inspired by lady gaga?

in working with and adapting these shapes [mainly the equilateral triangle and hexagon] i created these drawings!

these were really fun to make because i got to combine my love of patterning and narrative into one technique [more or less]. telling the incredibly personal story of my dreams was not meant to be interpreted by anyone other than me because only i am the one who knows, feels, and fears the worms. i was striving for movement with every line i made but recursively drew myself into static. a paper is a paper and is restrictive. but in defense of my size choices – i think no matter the size of the paper, if it were a mural or a pocket notebook, i would use it in such a way that would restrict the viewer. if it were the size of the tate modern, i would still fill the space till i were stuck inside it – and i would take you down with me.

in any case, i still feel like my drawings and installations exist more honestly as photographs. its a matter of the virgan need for control. there’s a lot more lightplay and impossible worldviews through the manipulated lens. these things are important to me. and you’re important to me.

new news is old news.

next up?  i’m going to try and write a paper about the role of diabolical / mystical symbolism in printmaking [i’m still sourcing it out to see if its plausible – backup idea is a study of william blake and zine making]

power costumes [going to have to pull a miracle to make this work =/ ]

landscapes for a helminthophobe [i have full reign on this project and i am feeling really confident about]
here are the bases i’m working on [sans embellishment – i’ll write more about this on tuesday most likely]

wow that last one looks COMPLETELY different now than it does when i took that picture.  lots of couching and applique.  featuring :: fingernails!  my [least] favourite human by product – lovingly dubbed ‘human ivory’ by someone on etsy somewhere.  oh and the print is upside down.

and as treat for you, having suffered through this ridiculously long and process riddled entry, here’s a hot picture of me!  and by hot i mean ‘wow its really hot under this wig’

and one last thing for all the former ghosties out there – freddy ruppert has released his RARE TRAX + DEMOS !  i recommend downloading it – i cannot stop listening to / obsessing over the talking heads cover.  it sounds nothing like the original!  brilliant!

Gothedron

i’m at the state where almost everything is in process, and not anywhere close to being finished.

which means it must be the perfect time to change my entire style, right?

right.

reqbat and i have joined forces against twee.  now, if any of my viewer[s] are twee, or have a fondness for it, close your ears and cover your eyes.

you see, we’ve gone goth.  or something.  if its dead, so what? FUCK YEA GOTHS is my new favourite thing on the internet, but i guess my admitting to want to be goth of very un-gothy of me. but! i’m also really digging the decora style of fruits, so technically, maybe, i’m still the same person?

so meta.

but the cuteness, it isnt doing anything for me anymore.  give me fad gadget, the horrors, suicide, cabaret voltaire, spider and the flies – anything but candy dream wonders.  even though i’m already a size 9/10, i’m dying for a pair of high buckled winklepickers and a classy wig.

i spent the night watching THE CROW and folding PHiZZ modules, and wound up folding this little bad boy ::

please note that this is 2 sides of the same tetrahedron hexahedron.  this is a big breakthrough in my renegade, heavily lady gaga inspired project[s].

regarding the backlash surrounding xiu xiu’s video for ‘dear god, i hate myself’ i have one thing to say ::

wikipedia defines art as :: the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions.

just because something appeals to the negative aspect of our psyches, does not mean it is not art.  know thyself, and know when you’re in over your head, trying to explain to a gossip blog the meaning of ‘aesthetics’.

lesson learned – and xiu xiu will go on with their fabulously bad selves, no matter what.

thank god for that.