MapQuesting the Mind

4/21/2018

Artist Heidi Whitman

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Home » Art and Style » MapQuesting the Mind: Artist Heidi Whitman

Ma p Q u e s t i n g t h e M i n d : A r t i s t He i d i W h i t m a n W i t h a c a r t o g r a p h e r ’s e ye a n d a n e x p l o re r ’s s o u l , He i d i W h i t m a n p l u m b s t h e rel a t i o n sh i p b e t w e e n e x t e r n a l a n d i n t e r n a l w o rl d s .

Te x t b y L o u i s P o s t e l

Photog raphy by Stewar t Clements

January – February 2017

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Artist Heidi Whitman

From Whitman’s Lost City series, Lost City of T (2016), ink, gouache,

acrylic, paper, canvas, and cast shadows, 20½″H × 15½″W × 2″D

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Artist Heidi Whitman

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Artist Heidi Whitman

Mental Map (27) (2016), ink and gouache on paper, 10″H × 17″W

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Artist Heidi Whitman

Night Voyage (2015), ink, gouache, acr ylic, paper, and cast shadows,

43″H × 21″W × 2″D

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Artist Heidi Whitman

Small World (2015), ink, gouache, acr ylic, paper, and cast shadows, 5′H

× 15′W × 5″D

The artist at work.

How do you paint what’s going on in side your skull? Heidi Whit man c omes from a long

line of ar t i sts who make such invi sible things vi sible. In four teenth- c entury Florenc e, the

architec t and painter Giotto di B ondone thawed out frozen-fac ed divines w ith a human

warmth. Painters such a s Mary Ca ssatt and Henri Mat i sse infused pic tures w ith light and

movement . L ater, in the twent ieth c entury, Elaine and Willem de Kooning , Jackson

Pollock , and Franz Kline made paint ing itself an event that would la st long pa st their

lifet imes.

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Artist Heidi Whitman

In the same t radit ion, Whit man perform s the magic of bringing un seen networks, both

internal and external, to life. In c ompari son, an f MRI scan i s but a pale shadow. Take away

the hard matter of our skull s, says Whit man, and observe how the networks w ithin us

enmesh them selves w ith the networks outside: st reets and t rain t racks, sw itchbacks and

footpath s, rooftops and road sig n s. No matter how met iculously an archaeologi st rec ord s

hi s digs through ancient ruin s, the c onflat ion of brain in side to world outside requires the

imaginat ion and draw ing prowess of a Whit man to describe.

Whit man di sc overed her love for draw ing while in film school in New York . She realized

that , unlike film, draw ing didn’t involve perpetually rai sing fund s, or working w ith

stubborn machines. She delighted in the fac t that all draw ing a sked of her wa s to maintain

a direc t c onnec t ion between brain, eye, and hand.

In 198 0, she g raduated from B oston’s S chool of the Museum of Fine Ar ts and shor tly

thereafter joined its faculty. Her draw ings, paint ings, and paper c on st ruc t ion s are show n

in the U. S. and abroad, most rec ently at TAG Fine Ar ts in L ondon, and the Kemper

Museum of Contemporary Ar t in Kan sa s City ; her work al so hangs in a mult itude of

private and c orporate c ollec t ion s.

In her S outh B oston studio, piec es from her latest paper- c on st ruc t ion work , L ost Cities ,

are pinned to the freshly painted wall s, one on top of another, old- school- salon style.

Whit man c on siders the net of shadows ca st by the piec es a s a key medium in her mi xed-

media c on st ruc t ion s and ma shups, a s elemental a s paper, paint , canva s, and glue.

Maps — of c ontemporary city g rid s, of ancient ruin s, and of the human brain— are a sourc e

of in spirat ion for Whit man. Mappamundi 3 , for example, w ith its int ricate, fragile,

interc onnec t ing paper lines, illust rates her c ombined pa ssion for ancient world s and the

cla ssical car tog raphy that i s suggest ive of the mind’s mysterious terrain. “I have always

been in love w ith maps,” she says. “Even a s a little girl, I loved those stories featuring maps

— Treasure Island , Winnie the Pooh . I got so into mapping brain s, people star ted a sking if

there wa s something going w rong w ith mine.”

Under Whit man’s studio worktable lies a cardboard box of scraps, bits of canva s, old map

shred s, odd papers she had painted for other projec ts. Such wa ste you c ouldn’t paw n off

on Goodw ill, but w ith an X-ACTO knife (rout inely “using up zillion s of blades”), t iny

sci ssors, and a glue gun, Whit man t ran sform s it all into cri sp topog raphies and t rac eries

of the mind, g rid s of pure c on sciousness.

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Artist Heidi Whitman

Thi s i s not to say that the work i s w ithout humor. In her c on st ruc t ion t itled L ost City of G ,

a t rain t rack lead s inc ong ruously nowhere, mocked by an upside - dow n palm t ree. L oops,

marshes, sw itchbacks, and various topog raphical markings cause a double take: are they

real, or merely symbol s standing in for mental ac t ivity? In L ost City of G , the c olors are of

the deser t , which, explain s Whit man, i s hardly c olorless. Her t ravel s through various

deser ts taught her that . A rec ent sojourn in Cent ral A sia in spired L ost City of G ’s palette

of sand, blue, g reen, orange -brow n, and slic es of red.

How many other lost cit ies lie under those Cent ral A sian sand s, or under the ent ire

spinning crust of our planet , for that matter? And how w ill they seek out the networks in

our mind s to make some unifying c onnec t ion? Conversely, what do our mind s yearn for,

one wonders —what do our memories hold, our dream s c onflate, what happenings w ithin

and w ithout our skull s t rigger us, deaden us, c onfuse us, uplift us, and awaken us to ar t ?

Whit man’s ar t explores those very quest ion s. •

Editor’s note: Heidi Whit man i s represented by Carroll and S on s, B oston,

carrolland son s.net . To see more of her work , vi sit heidiwhit man.c om.

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