Heather Hart

Early life

Hart was born in Seattle, Washington, to Susan Hart and Harry H. Hart III, a carpenter. Her parents met as students at an art school in Oakland, California. She grew up in North Seattle.

In 1998, Hart received a BFA from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, where she majored in Painting and Video. She attended the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University in New Jersey. In 2008, Hart received an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in New Jersey, where her focus was interdisciplinary art.

Career

Hart learned carpentry from her father at a young age. Hart uses architectural forms mixed with family and oral histories, multiple narratives, and participatory engagements as integral components in much of her creative work.

Hart’s "Rooftop Oracles" is a series of life-size rooftops, which look as though they were dropped from the sky or emerging from the ground, offer viewers an interactive experience as they climb onto and under the structures. She has created different installations in the series and realizes her vision with the collaboration of family and friends, in a sort of raising the roof effort that involves many people working together as a community.

In 2010, Hart created the installation, "The Northern Oracle: We Will Tear the Roof Off the Mother," at Franconia Sculpture Park in Minnesota.

In 2012, her sculptural installation, "The Eastern Oracle: We Will Tear the Roof Off the Mother," was presented at the Brooklyn Museum as part of their Raw/Cooked series.

"The Western Oracle: We Will Tear the Roof Off the Mother," was an installation at Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park in 2013. It included an elk-hide drum wall that was built in a tetris of rectangles as a way to sound out the ritual of the oracle. Indian-American drum maker, Joseph Seymour, provided instruction on creating the drums, with installation consultation from Cornish College furniture professor, Attila Barcha.

From May to November 2017, "Outlooks: Heather Hart" is installed at Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, New York.

Black Lunch Table

Hart is co-founder of the Black Lunch Table project, a radical archiving project, which was awarded a 2016 Emerging Fields Grant from Creative Capital. The Black Lunch Table project is an ongoing project created by Hart and co-founder and collaborator Jina Valentine. The project, which started in 2005 when both Hart and Valentine were artists in residence at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, provides a format where participants can come together to consider contemporary issues of race, archiving, and the under representation of minority artists in the art historical canon, often taking on the form of Wikipedia editathons.

Personal life

In 2012, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which she successfully recovered from, during her first solo show at the Brooklyn Museum.

Hart currently lives and works in New York City.

Honors

Exhibitions

Hart's work has been exhibited worldwide including Olympic Sculpture Park, Real Art Ways, 92YTribeca, Jersey City Museum, NYU Galleries, 2B Gallery in Budapest, Rush Arts Gallery, Portland Art Center, Soil Art Gallery, Studio Museum in Harlem, Islip Art Museum, Museum of Art and Craft in Japan, and Art in General. She has collaborated in pieces by Pablo Helguera and Raphael Ortiz. Her work has been included in exhibitions curated by Kara Walker, Fred Wilson, Deborah Willis and Hank Willis Thomas.

Works and publications

Chronological order