Heidi Norton
Scattered Sun

Heidi Norton

Through the mediums of photography, sculpture, and painting my work speaks to the instability and liminality of time, while investigating ideas of preservation through material and modes of display. My artistic practice, informed by my 1970s upbringing as a child of New Age homesteaders in West Virginia, reveals my deep connection to the land, plant life, and the natural world. Light and living plants are the primary mediums, channeled through photographic film, glass, resin, and wax, along with plant material detritus from the studio. Though they may seem fixed, the resulting constructions change as the plants decay, alluding to my interest in transformation and the passage of time. The uncertain fate of the plants is just one testament to the principles of change and mutability within my practice. There is a regenerative process to the work—fragments of work from the past—the skeletal imprint of a palm leaf in resin, surfaces of sculptures, for example—become the basis for these sculptural works. At times the works are evocative of herbariums or chlorophyll slides viewed under a microscope lens; other works foreground the use of glass as a medium for vision and a means of preservation. When placed into the window bays, the translucent “screens” punctuated with plant segments, photographs, and other ephemera become a mutable threshold marking the surface of the building while visually merging what is inside and what is out. The installation work also reflects on cultural habits related to collecting, preservation, and methods of display, as reflected in the gathering of plants and botanical specimens in public arboretums, backyard gardens, and herbariums, as well as in the curating and collecting of art. Norton considers the value of slower modes of vision while alluding to the significant role of plant life.