Kelly Heaton

Education

Heaton's interest in art and technology led her to interdisciplinary studies at multiple universities. She received her Bachelor of Art from Yale University in 1994 and her Master of Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2000.

Heaton deferred acceptance to veterinary school to pursue her career as an artist. She was awarded a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship to attend the Master of Fine Arts program at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts. Heaton went on to study at the MIT Media Lab and graduated with a Master of Science from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2000.

The subject of her Master's thesis was "physical pixels," a sculptural effort to liberate computer graphics from the flat screen of a computer monitor. Heaton's suite of prototypes included the "Digital Palette" for sequencing loops of colored-light animation; and "Peano," a system of reconfigurable blocks, each of which behaved as an RGB pixel. In 2001, her thesis work was awarded the L'Oreal Promotion Prize in the Art and Science of Color.

Career

In the early 2000s, Heaton developed a reputation for complex, obsessive and often humorous installations involving technology. During her time at the MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies, she worked with engineer Steven Gray to create her first major sculpture: "The Pool" of "Reflection Loop,"a large concave slab embedded with 400 reprogrammed Furby dolls arranged in the pattern of water molecules. The Furby dolls were altered to mirror the presence of a viewer, creating a noisy, amusing and weird reflection of the audience until the robotic toys eventually "died" from excessive use. Reflection Loop was selected for the 2001 Annual Exhibition of the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Shortly thereafter, Heaton was offered her first solo exhibition in New York at Bitforms gallery.

The artist went on to numerous shows and residencies, including the now defunct Art Interactive in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a joint appointment with the Department of Computer Science and Department of Information Science and Information Studies at Duke University. In 2003, Heaton's elaborate, wacky and sinister installation, "Live Pelt," premiered at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in New York City. The central piece of the show was a coat ("The Surrogate") made from 64 used Tickle Me Elmo dolls that Heaton "trapped" on online auction while documenting every detail of her transactions with other eBay members. The acquired Elmo dolls were eviscerated for their furry pelts and laughing electronics, all of which Heaton re-engineered into a coat that giggles and quivers when touched, like a surrogate lover. Filmmakers Shambhavi Kaul and Joshua Gibson collaborated with Heaton to document the various personalities of her process.

In early 2004, Heaton moved to Switzerland where she lived and worked until 2009 as a part-time innovation consultant for the Diabetes Care division of Roche Diagnostics. During this time, she authored and co-authored several patents related to methods of data visualization for continuous glucose data. When not inventing diabetes care products for Roche, Heaton taught herself analog electrical engineering, and developed another body of work, "The Parallel Series." Heaton's art from this period is grounded in the observation of nature and spirit. Her sculptural, electronic "paintings" are heavily worked, revealing her struggle to create what Jerry Saltz described as "intricately wired wall-mounted abstract tangles (that) generate sounds of the world: chirps, insect calls, rainfall, a beating heart. Mixing this with strange drawings of trees, portraits with lights and odd notations, piles of transistors and transformers, and a possessed mad-hatter intention, Heaton replicates the world while seeming to tap into the cosmic mainframe. Conjuring objects that have life but that are built to die one day makes her cryptic work akin to witnessing engineered Emily Dickinson poems come to life.”

Kelly Heaton's most recent exhibition, "Pollination," (2015) invites the viewer into a fertile exchange involving not only bees and plants, but our very identity as human beings. A tour de force of sculpture, electronics, perfume, and mixed media art, Heaton's recent work challenges us to see the connections between all things, and to take responsibility for our role in the ecosystem. Dominating the exhibition is "The Beekeeper," a floor to ceiling kinetic sculpture that Heaton refers to as “an energetic self-portrait.” At the heart of the sculpture, bees fly around an illuminated honeycomb rooted in a landscape of floral electronics, while a reflective mind and crystalline third eye spiral up to a radiant sun of hands. A self-taught perfumer, Heaton created fragrances to seduce her audience with scent, including "Smells Like Weeds (The Queen of Hungry Spirits)," a rare perfume made by Heaton using bee-friendly plants; and "Smells Like Money (Hungry Spirits)," a delicate perfume extracted from hundreds of dollar bills using the labor-intensive method of cold enfleurage. Heaton's "Shamanic Bee" is a large and haunting portrait that begs for human attention to the plight of insect pollinators. Other of Heaton's works that urge our respect for nature include "Weeds," a vitrine of exquisite silk flowers; "Colony Collapse Disorder," an engineer’s interpretation of the honeybee epidemic; "Emergency Queen Cell," a brass hive with an inverted Virgin Mary; "The Monsanto Series," agricultural landscapes invaded by manmade devices; and "This is the Problem, Not the Solution," a crossword puzzle of endangered pollinators and threats to their existence. Heaton's "Diseases of the Hive" series cautions against our own infestation by electronic devices. To complement the show, the artist has written "Pollination," a book documenting these works and the story of their creation.

In 2014, Heaton founded The Virginia Perfume Company to create authentic, small-batch perfumes based on old-world techniques.

Personal life

Kelly Heaton lives in rural Virginia with her husband and stepchildren.

Solo exhibitions

Group Exhibitions

Awards and Grants