MEGAN HEERES

A native Michigander, Megan Heeres returned home from the West Coast in 2007 to study at Cranbrook Academy of Art where she earned her MFA. Megan has been involved in the local arts community for over ten years as an advocate, volunteer, and teacher, all roles she plays currently with her Invasive Paper Project. She participates in projects locally and nationally, most recently at the Center for the Book in New York City and the Salina Art Center in Kansas. Megan has been an artist-in-residence at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences, the Michele Schara Residency at the Brightmoor Makerspace in Detroit, the Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, Illinois, the Santa Fe Art Institute in New Mexico, and Pyramid Atlantic Center for the Arts in Hyattsville, Maryland.

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Megan contemplates and experiments with matters of tending, time, humor, chance and place. She begins each work by constructing controlled environments in which materials can act how they want. The materials ­– from handmade paper pulp, ink, plants, slip and latex paint, sound-responsive lights and fabric, plaster and found motors – perform actions specific to their physicality and leave marks or residues as they move. These actions and marks then inform the final work’s formal qualities and conceptual nature.

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Her collaboration with the materials that determine a work’s making are similar to what she asks of her audience. The processes she employs are openly revealed to the viewer – both artist and viewer uncover the piece as it changes over the duration. Neither knows what the outcome will be. It is in this vulnerability as a maker that she connects with the work, with the space in which it resides, and the public who partake in its making.

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Megan’s work takes on multiple forms from installation, to sculpture, works on paper, and socially-engaged projects. An essential thread running through them all is materiality and accessibility. Megan is committed to making work that engages an audience who are at all levels of art education and awareness. Using familiar, recognizable materials and creating pieces that are responsive and or participatory provides an opportunity to interact with art in a less threatening manner. Megan experiments with strategies to break down the barriers between artwork and audience, as well as the barriers between artist and audience. This means that her work populates non-traditional spaces and it reaches people who may not frequent galleries. Megan’s multi-disciplinary practice shifts to be responsive to the questions she is posing, the community to which she is accountable, and the materials with which she is working.