CAITLIN L. HEINZ
by Caitlin L. Heinz
photography Emily Spicer
After a short career in music where she performed at Carnegie Hall in NYC, Caitlin Heinz stepped gently out of the limelight in order to pursue a rich and impoverished existence in visual arts. The moment of transition occurred after she won a regional photography contest and has since been exhibiting, collecting, evolving and making enormous messes for over ten years. Born with her feet in the dirt in Kentucky on August 21, 1984, Caitlin has experienced a freedom to create combined with a cultural oppression that has provoked a inclination towards the eccentric and the traditional. Over a cup of tea, she shared with me, among many things, her philosophy concerning artists' place in society in her kitchen on a sunny May morning. Her infamous talent for meshing the impractical and the practical was gracefully executed during the interview as she scrubbed her bathroom floors and tended to her window garden while chatting with me.
Caitlin L. Heinz: I would like to ask you seven questions this morning, if that is okay with you.
Caitlin L. Heinz: I would love to answer seven questions this morning. Yesterday I answered two and I feel that is not nearly enough for one day - kind of like hugs.
CH: What about hugs?
CH: My mom always said to me a person needs at least eight hugs a day. Sometimes it's hard to fill that quota, but I always try my best.
CH: That wasn't one of the questions, by the way.
CH: Oh, that's good. I got a bonus question!
CH: Here is the first question. One?
CH: What? Oh, is that the question?
CH: Yes, I hope you don't mind the unusual format.
CH: Oh no! I don't mind at all. Thank you, for it, in fact. Would you like to start over? I understand now.
CH: Certainly. One?
CH: Two sisters, Alice and Brooke and cats. But my parents now have cats, dogs, goats, and no sisters. I guess they tried to fill the spaces.
CH: Two?
CH: Earl grey with milk and yellow and off-white.
CH: Three?
CH: Well, I hate to repeat myself, but I guess cats and plants. They both have lovely feelings - I mean, when you touch them. My best were Gretchen and a jade.
CH: Four?
CH: I have been a waitress, sales girl, nanny, librarian, sewing teacher, preschool teacher, farm hand, service trainer, and lamp repairer. Is that it? Yes, I think so.
CH: Five?
CH: Primarily, skin. It is about touch and smell and taste - sensational experience. You know when there is a nearly electric shock between two people? This is the most fascinating element of existence to me right now. The membrane, walls, boundaries that we create and care for and attempt to destroy. These walls, so to speak, are a moment of continual hypocrisy between two people. 'Connect with me but don't try to change me!' (she laughs) Don't get me wrong though. I am not cynical. I love this - this space of encounter! People and getting to know people are by far my favorite thing in the world. It is a source of constant delight and expansion!
CH: Six?
CH: This is a hard one and I have asked myself this so many times. It is very important to me though that all artists answer it. I think the whole argument surrounds language, at its core. Humans - and all other animals, for that matter- need to communicate. There are so many different ways of communicating other than speaking and visual art is one of them. So that is a functional answer. Artists are communicators of things that cannot be communicated in other ways. Otherwise we'd be writers, right? But personally, I cannot not do it. It's both as extraordinarily important and mundane as eating to me. Miranda July put it very well once - if I can find it. Oh, here it is. "Life is so ridiculously gorgeous, strange, heartbreaking, horrific, etc., that we are compelled to describe it to ourselves, but we can't! We cannot do it! And so we make art." Isn't that wonderful?
CH: Yes, it is. Thank you for sharing it. This is the last one. Seven?
CH: My grandmother and a hot humid summer day.
CH: Thank you so much for today. The tea was very good and your floors look beautiful.
CH: It's been my pleasure. And you are so kind to say so - they are your floors too!
Quote from an interview with Miranda July by Matthew Higgs published on the Interview Magazine website. Click here for the full interview.
