Heather Weathers
Biography
Heather Weathers was born in Metairie, Louisiana 1971. She attended the New Orleans Center for Creative Art, combining mixed media and contemporary ideas. After graduating from NOCCA, Heather earned her BFA at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, pursuing performance art, painting and ceramic art, and in 1994 she performed in a New Orleans Industrial band called Gimp. Heather earned her MFA from Pratt Institute in 1998, combining her feminist views, multi media materials and performance art in a piece involving a bikini made out of meat called “Sweat Meat” in 2001.
After graduating, Heather started a series of multiple site art programs in Brooklyn, New York that included utilizing The Dorthy Bennet Mercy Center. After creating public art in gardens at the Hollenback Community Garden, she exhibited with the feminist group Soho 20 and The Exhibitionists.
She exhibited her multimedia Feminist art combining performance art and installations at The Big Top Gallery in New Orleans from 2000 - 2010. She was able to write grants to further children’s art education from 2011 to present. Heather Weathers currently exhibits her contemporary work in New York, Kansas City and New Orleans.
In 2007 Heather Weathers was recognized by the ACLU foundation of Louisiana as a defender of civil liberties. She is an active member of the Women’s Caucus for Art of Louisiana , the New Orleans Photo Alliance and the Second Story Gallery. Weathers support the National Organization of Women. She donates artwork often to benefit women’s rights. She continues to use art as a political weapon today in New Orleans.
You can find her work in the following collections: McNeese State University, Louisiana; Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan; Museum of Menstruation, Maryland; The New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana; The Paul and Lulu Hilliard Museum ,Louisiana New York Body Archive, New York and Florida. You can also view more work at www.heatherweathers.com.
Visual Art Statement
Throughout my career as an artist I have responded to external stimuli by using materials and settings central and crucial to describing those events, in performative photography.
I inhabit, animate and manipulate those materials and settings as costume and being. The performance of the sculpture is presented in photographic detail.
I draw upon my education and experience to re-contextualize classic tropes and pop-consumer intervals to create the staged version of myself, in order to express feminist subject matter.
Since I am the inhabitant and the filter of the themes I construct, I am describing the evolution of feminism through the inclusion of the vocabulary of the contemporary southern woman.
My background and education inform me, my body’s politic charges me, my materials co-exist alongside what they make of me, and in response to these suggestions and parameters, I pursue the creation of the physical object in order to change the vagaries of inspiration into the intra and inter-metamorphic fuel of the consciously-expressed statement. This is how artists create change, and from where the desire to, arrives. What I am creating as a filter for my subjects is a substantial expansion of the definition, vocabulary, and scope of Feminism.
Heather Weathers
1820 Louisiana Ave NOLA 70115
(718) 930-6563 (504) 233 - 0084
Employment Present -2014 Talented Visual Arts Instructor,
Jefferson Parish Public Schools, Jefferson Parish,LA
2014-2008 Talented Visual Arts Instructor, RSD,
New Orleans, LA
Education
1993 BFA, University of Southwestern Louisiana at Lafayette
1998 MFA, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY
2001 Lifetime Ancillary Certification K-12
Exhibitions (S)
2021 Space Egg Continuum Second Story Gallery, NO, LA
2018 Doberge Disco UNO Gallery, NO, LA
2018 Unity The Valiant Theatre, NO,LA
2017-18 Persistent Mimi’s, A Project of Prospect 4 New Orleans and PhotoNola
2017 Super Saturated Zeitgeist Theatre , NO, LA
2016 Reconstruction The Parlor, NO,LA
2015 Feminist Facets Galerie Royale, NO,LA
2014 Happy Heather Fun Time K3 space, NO,LA
2012 XL FemCapsule Big Top, Three Ring Productions, NO,LA
Exhibitions (G)
2022 Farewell to the Flesh with the Second Story Gallery members
As We Heal curated by Leona Strassberg Steiner
2017-2016 Face To Face :a Survey of Portraiture of Louisiana Artist Curated by Jane Hart
Paul and Lulu Hilliard Museum, Lafayette, LA
2016 Of Myth, Fun and Folly New Orleans Art Center, NO,LA
La Femme Curated by Don Marshall New Orleans Art Center, NO,LA
The Wetlands Art Tour organized by John Calhoun Good Children Gallery, NO,LA
Generation X: Razzle Dazzle A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, New York
2013-16 Femme Fest Curated by LA WCA The Jazz and Heritage Foundation, NO,LA
2009-22 Wish You Were Here AIR Gallery, Chelsea, NYC,NY
2015 Women Do it! International WCA Torpeto Factory Art Center, Washington, DC
2014 LadyFest New Orleans city-wide exhibition, NO,LA
Woman’s Art Caucus Show Broadmoor Library & Community Ctr, NO,LA
2013 Reunion, 10 year past-present Big Top, Three Ring Productions, NO,LA
2011 Textured Cinema Protein The Slap and Tickle, KC,MO
ERA Today Performance, NOLA Now II Contemporary Art Center, NO,LA
Publications
2017 The Gambit Persistent, A Project of Prospect 4 New Orleans and PhotoNola NO,LA
2015 Pelican Bomb Feminist Facets, NO,LA
2010 News-Press Meat Dress offers food for thought, Dayna Harpster, Ft Myers,FL
2010 Times Picayune Lagniappe, Meat Repeat, Doug Mc Cash, NO,LA
Collections
Paul and Lulu Hilliard Museum Lafayette, LA
McNeese State University, Louisiana Joel L. Hall Gallery, Lake Charles, LA
Detroit Institute of Arts Detroit, MI
Museum of Women in the Arts Archives Washington, D.C
Museum of Menstruation, Maryland New York Body Archive, New York and Florida
The New Orleans Museum of Art NO,LA