Heather Bird Harris

Lives and works in Atlanta, GA

Artist statement

I grew up on the coast of New England in a town that has lost over 50 feet of shore in my lifetime. As an adult, I fell in love in New Orleans and started my family there before moving to Georgia after Hurricane Ida. Both of these heart-homes exist on an edge we have since retreated from as each place’s relationship with water has become more perilous. My work renders these geologic shifts at a scale I can emotionally handle, using clay, water, and agential materials to unlearn Western epistemologies of control and reconnect with responsive, relational life at the water's edge. Across disciplines, my work teaches me how to live in a rapidly changing climate and investigates the relationship between American history and ecological crisis: how landscapes hold the traces of human decisions, whose knowledge gets preserved or dismissed, and what other ways of knowing might make emergence and systems change more possible. I work across painting, film, alternative photography, sound, and social practice, often beginning with a particular place and following the histories, materials, and more-than-human lives embedded within it. My practice functions as a way to balance love and grief, while paying close attention to biomimetic relationships that model how to mother into possibilities for repair.

Artwork