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From There to Here

  • From There to Here by Heidi Whitman
  • Heidi Whitman
    From There to Here, 2011
    Ink, gouache, acrylic, paper, cast shadows
    32 x 48 x 3 inches
    Gift of Friends of Dana-Farber

    Heidi Whitman is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston where she received a Clarissa Bartlett Traveling Scholarship for Alumni and a Faculty Enrichment Grant. Her paper constructions represent both imagined terrains and mental maps. "In my reimagined places, shape and shadow interact invoking memory, presence, and absence."

    From There to Here illustrates the artist's technique of hand-cutting intricate shapes from drawings in ink, gouache, and acrylic to create a matrix of roads resembling a modern city grid, simultaneously alluding to the complex processes of the mind. Evocative of spaces both seen and unseen, this paper construction directs us into the intangible landscape of shadows cast by the floating shapes. The intriguing effect is a realm that is neither here nor there, simultaneously solid and tenuous, real and imagined, finite and immeasurable.

    Whitman has exhibited internationally at TAG Fine Arts in London, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City; Scope Miami; The Christopher Henry Gallery, New York; Pierogi, Brooklyn, NY; Harvard College; Wheaton College; Clark University; Simmons College; and the McMullen Museum of Art. Her work is included in many private and public collections including a recently completed public commission for the City of Cambridge at Jill Brown-Rhone Park. She is currently a faculty member at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and maintains a studio in Boston's South End.

    From There to Here, 2011 is located in the Longwood Center. Two additional works, Lost City of H, 2015 and From Here to There, 2011 can be viewed in the Charles Dana Building. Both are gifts of the Friends of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.