We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Amy Heller. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Amy below.

Amy, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today. Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?

I believe that I am equally as happy being both. I have had regular jobs while simultaneously creating my artwork and I prefer the balance of doing both. However, when Covid hit I made a decision to leave a job that I loved so that I could pursue my artwork full-time. I had a book that I was working on plus several museum exhibitions and I was at that proverbial “fork in the road.” Deadlines were looming, so the decision was clear: I needed to devote myself to my art, and have been doing so ever since.

Amy, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

A native of Washington, D.C., I have been coming to Provincetown on Cape Cod every summer since I was a child, walking and combing the beaches with my mother.

I earned my BA in fine art at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and my MFA in photography at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

I have been an Exhibit Specialist for the Smithsonian Museums and the National Gallery of Art, a Photo Editor/Researcher/Curator for U.S. News & World Report, National Geographic, Microsoft, and the Newseum in Washington, D.C. I live year-round on Cape Cod with my husband.

I love dance and movement, and some of my first black and white photographs were time/motion studies inspired by the human locomotion work of Etienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge.

I also experimented with alternative photographic processes, and loved working with cyanotypes on fabric, transparency, motion, and light.

Drawn to the natural world, I find beauty and grace in the simplest discoveries: intertwining seaweeds, dancing skate egg cases, sand patterns, lyrical forms of sand and sea. In my work I express my love of Cape Cod and its natural surroundings and my concern for the fragility of the environment. I recently have been making LED mixed-media cyanotype photographs on fabric, inspired by the blue sky, using figures resembling skate egg cases and, in some artworks, using the actual egg cases.

My artwork has won many awards and has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is included in collections both here and abroad. This includes: the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, the Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis, the Dimock Gallery at The George Washington University, and many private collections.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is the ability to express my ideas in limitless ways with no rules or boundaries, and from time to time stumbling upon the happy accident. When I was a child I used to lie down on the couch and stare at our cathedral ceiling and dream of the world upside-down. Since then I have never stopped seeing the world that way.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I have been making art my entire life and one of my first jobs was as an Exhibit Specialist at Smithsonian and National Gallery of Art. I fell in love with photography and got an MFA, became a Photo Editor/Researcher and I curated museum photography exhibitions. I had been living in Washington, D.C. with my husband and we moved to my second ancestral home, Cape Cod. I refocused my attention on my art and I haven’t looked back.

Contact Info:

• Website: amyheller.com
• Instagram: amyhellerartist
• Facebook: Amy Heller

Image Credits

1. Self-portrait
2. Like Mother, Like Daughter, LED mixed media cyanotype on silk
3. Horseshoe vs. Skates, LED mixed media cyanotype on silk
4. Liminal Jellyfish, LED mixed media cyanotype on silk
5. Ode to Muybridge, Time/Motion Study, B & W gelatin silver print
6. Group of collaged cyanotype on fabric egg sculptures
7. Stuck I, Collaged cyanotype on fabric sculpture
8. Skates Swimming, Cyanotype on fabric
9. Paper Clips, Cyanotype on fabric

All artwork by Amy Heller and artwork photographed by Amy Heller. Self-portrait by Amy Heller.