Meet Heidi Norton | Artist and Educator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Heidi Norton and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Heidi, how does your business help the community?
During Covid I started an online art collective and art education platform called Vantage Points (Fall classes just launched). It consists of artists of all levels, ages, and mediums, throughout the United States and even the world. At Vantage Points we believe that artists are the greatest agents of change and that their voices need to be heard. As an artist I saw that there were limited communities that supported this aside from the traditional institutional ones. I was also burnt out teaching adjunct for little pay and little respect. There are many pathways for a person to become a “successful” artist, not just graduate school and then hoping and praying that a gallery finds you. And foremost the definition of “success” is something that an artists needs to clearly define based on their goals and aspirations (not necessarily the traditional gallery model). Secondly, there are many many ways to get to this end point and they are constantly shifting. We are here to guide, offer advice, and talk about the different trajectories. The other beautiful thing about VP is how it merges communities of artists that may already exist. Artist mentors join and connect their communities with other mentor’s communities, layering many networks over and over. All of the mentors are actively exhibiting and working in the art world so they guidance they offer is tested and practical. We strive to support artists in. many ways by offering scholarships, exhibition opportunities.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I am contemporary mix media artists who works primarily in sculpture, painting, photography and installation. I am interested how we preserve and present the natural world. My work seeks to “preserve” and present organic materials by encasing them in glass, wax, resin and paint, often resembling enlarged microscope slides of scientific specimens. Though they may seem fixed, the resulting constructions change as the plants decay, alluding to my interest in transformation and the passage of time.

If all continued to grow and grow, if there were no death, the world would be monstrous.

My father wrote a home remedy on a piece of paper in 1977, the year I was born. It was folded and pressed like a dried-up flower in a Foxfire book he sent me in the mail. It spoke of cobwebs, bacon, and muslin, a supposed natural remedy for a wound made by a rusty nail. A year after I received the note, I showed it to him and he refused to believe he wrote it. My parent’s past went missing, they wrote their own self-mythology, retrospectively, using time and space to distance themselves from their previous life as homesteaders. My work is in part an attempt to reclaim their time lost. Through the mediums of photography, sculpture, and painting my work speaks to the instability and liminality of time, while investigating ideas of preservation through material and modes of display.

The relationship between image and object is cyclical and malleable. Material is deconstructed and folded into new works; objects become photographs and photographs become objects, each activating and demanding a new space. The studio is the activation site. It’s hybridity between plant study and art production is a constant negotiation. It has provided insight into my process, thus, helping me realize that I have different ways of performing and producing.The photographic process is methodical and structured, allowing me to use the lens to distort, skew and disrupt space and time–to fix, to sterilize, to make permanent. The sculptural process is one of improvisation, of reaction, of movement, of change. Glass is broken, resin is recycled, dead plant is plucked, and impressions of the studio are lifted and layered into new works.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I love going to the Met Cloisters. It’s such a magical place and has the unicorn tapestry. If you want to travel a bit more north into the Bronx, check out the beautiful gardens and vistas at Wavehill. I had a solo exhibition there last summer. I also love taking water taxis, it’s a cheap and fun way to get a different perspective from the water. Speaking of ferries you can jump one to Governor Island, rent a bike and cruise around. They have great sustainability projects like the Billion Dollar Oyster Projects, the soil institute, lots of artists residencies. You also get a great view of the Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty. You can also relax on a hammock or if you have kids they can play in the YARD (a playground made of recyclables). Then I would stop in China town for dumplings and bubble tea before heading to Tribecca to checkout to art shows. My favorite galleries are Rachel Uffner, Chart, Margot Samel. I also love the Rockaways and grabbing a drink at the Surf Club or the Rockaway Hotel.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Community is so important to my life. It took me 40 years to realize my role in it. I am a connector and believe deeply in the reciprocity and generosity of a relationship. What you give, you get back. I want to give a big shout out to my parents for encouraging me to forge my own path in life, they taught me the importance of being one with the natural world – giving and receiving, trust and resilience. Also a shout out to late Barbara Degenevieve whose death left a hole in the art academic world. I met this badass woman in graduate school. She taught me that the truth is what opens doors. She was fierce and deeply committed to her students. I feel like I strive to be more like that all the time and think about her when I am teaching my students. And speaking of, to my students who deserve a big shout out for being brave and always putting themselves out there. Also, want to give a shoutout to my teaching colleagues and fellow artist, Kate Steciw, who has taught me there are a million opportunities for everyone and that generosity, compassion, spirit and ambition is what gets us farther. Last but not least, all the artists of the Women Sculpture Group in NYC, especially my partner in crime, Kat Chamberlin, Dena Paige-Fisher and Alta Buden who keep Sarah Bednarek’s vision going because they also realize the power in community.

Website: www.heidi-norton.com

Instagram: @heidi_norton @we_are_vantage_points

Other: Vantage Points: www.wearevantagepoints.com