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Heather Rasmussen was born in 1982 in Santa Ana, California. She lives and works in Los Angeles. She has been selected for the 2011-2012 installment of Exposure, a three-person exhibition series showcasing emerging photography at the Art Institute of Chicago. In September 2009, Ms. Rasmussen had a solo exhibition in the Sandroni Rey Container, Los Angeles, a shipping container turned gallery space. In March 2009, Rasmussen had her first solo exhibition, ship happens, with Light & Wire Gallery in Los Angeles. Her work was recently published in the book Unfolded, Paper in Design, Art, Architecture and Industry, alongside artists Olafur Eliasson, Thomas Demand and Frank Gehry. I contacted her this week to talk a bit about her work.
I like your business card…especially where it reads artist, photographer, archivist. The last term is definitely intriguing.
Well, although I do not have a Library Science degree, I have had a few jobs that involve archiving. I like to organize things, especially other peoples things. In this case, I am an archivist of artworks. When I worked at the gallery Blum & Poe I handled their digital archive - scanning in documentation of artwork, entering into a filemaker program and also making sure the images represented the original artworks the best they could. I’ve also done archiving for working artists - like Felipe Dupoy. We documented all his artworks and organized them based on project into a system that was manageable.
How did you find yourself on this path ? Were you interested in photography as a child or was this something to came out in the later years ?
Photography definitely came later in life. I was always interested in art, but grew up training in classical ballet. It was my passion and my life. I auditioned for the major ballet companies in the US but was injured at the time and did not make it in. My mom made me apply to college, and I ended up going to UC Irvine. I began a double major in Dance and Studio Art, with a minor in Digital art. By Junior year I had taken all the basic photo classes and was completely obsessed. I spent my senior year focusing on Art. I’ve continued making photographs throughout grad school at Calarts and now afterwards.
Tell me about your three favorite images you’ve created.
National Seashore in Wellfleet, Cape Cod, MA, 2011
We were in Cape Cod for a short vacation this summer, and were trying to find a specific fish place in Wellfleet. As we pulled into the parking lot, a very drunken large man was yelling at two policeman down on the beach. The restaurant was up on a large cliff at the top of sand dunes, and the only way for the police to get the man up to the squad car was up a very steep sand hill. The man could barely walk because he was so drunk, and kept falling into the sand, and yelling at onlookers to help him. The cops had everyone step away while they put him into the car. The sky was just beginning to cloud over and get cold and people were packing up their things. I shot a few images with Kodak TriX-400 Black and White film from above. The people look like miniatures and I love the paneling that happens with the clouds, the empty sky and the sand.
buddha’s hand lemons (double), echo park, 2010
I was picking lemons off the tree at my previous place in Echo Park when I spotted these two mutant lemons. They are actually called Buddhas Hand lemons, but these two only had a little bit of the ‘finger’ like parts that Buddhas Hand lemons normally have (you can wiki to see more). I decided I wanted to photograph these, and brought them to my studio. This image is a real (accidental) perfect double exposure shot with a 500 series Hasselblad. There is no photoshop manipulation, which I of course thought was great, and lucky!
Untitled. (New Orleans, Louisiana, September 10, 2005).
2010 I made this photograph in 2010, and it has become one of my most favorite images. I have a few different bodies of work going on, but this series called DestructConstruct is the most structured.
The series DestructConstruct is based on found photographs of shipping container accidents downloaded from the Internet. Each found image is used as a model for a sculpture that is constructed for the production of the photograph. The sculpture then exists as a photographic work, which directly relates to the original photograph, including the name, place, and date the accident happened. I abstract the scenes of the catastrophes, removing the original context and placing the damaged containers, rendered simply out of colored paper, onto a seamless background. This process transforms the containers into pristine patterns of color and shape, thereby confusing scale and altering the perception of the shipping container as an object.
This particular scene was a huge challenge to recreate, as the original found image was from a satellite image of shipping containers floating in water a few days after Hurricane Katrina. I built the sculpture on the floor and then proceeded to set up my 4x5 film camera as high as my tripod would go. I stood on a 10ft ladder and tried for hours to capture the right perspective. After processing the film I realized that I would have to re-make the sculpture and re-shoot it. Normally I just set the paper containers onto the seamless background, but in order to get the camera in the right place, I had to glue each container to a piece of seamless and hang it on the wall. It took forever. I was able to get the shot I wanted and the piece has now become one of my most successful photographs. It is currently hanging in the Modern Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago Museum until March 4, 2012, and it will become a part of their permanent collection in 2012.
You have an exhibition opening this coming Sunday called “HITO: San Pedro/Port of Los Angeles/Port of Long Beach”, can you tell us more about that ?
The exciting thing about this show is the ability to experiment. Normally I show very finished photographs, drawings or sculptures. This exhibition brings together many bodies of work from the my practice, tied to one location: The Port of Los Angeles. I have pinpointed locations in San Pedro, The Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach that have either greatly influenced her practice or are exact sites of a project. Located on a large scale map in the gallery, small tags with my logo HITO match to numbers on the walls, as well as a key with descriptions of each project. I’m hoping this will inspire viewers to visit these sites - to seek out the objects displayed from the Museum on the Lane Victory or recreate the views seen in my photographs for themselves. During the planning process I kept adding things in, more photographs, drawings, maps, an archive of 4x6 images, personal books that relate to the project, and lastly, string to tie it all together. It was very exciting installing the show and seeing my vision come together on the walls. I also have a map I created online that is constantly growing: http://g.co/maps/n64ey The opening is this Sunday from 1-5pm !
Opening Reception Sunday Jan 22, 2012 1-5 pm
Angeles Gate Cultural Center
3601 South Gaffey Street
San Pedro, CA 90731-6969
