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By Beth Olsen

Canby, Ore., artist Heidi Petersen has been disassembling things since she was a girl. “I used to perplex my mother by mixing up all my toys,” she says. “I never kept like parts together.” This inherent inclination to disarrange items, and an alternative primary school experience focused on creative expression, turned on
the artist to assemblage art.

The Oregon native finds inspiration for her art through new juxtapositions of objects after they’re removed from their original settings. “A piece of art often comes about from the surprise of a striking image,” she says. “The sort of ‘A-ha!’ moment you get when you see that relationship emerge.”

It goes beyond seeing how the items look together: Petersen creates her pieces to explore the poetic interaction between the items. Daily Mirrors combines antique glasses with painted paper. “It’s a reminder that how you see things often mirrors how you see yourself,” she says. Wind at the Door, made of an old wood door and ceramic birds, both found and newly molded, represents “a heart as a door opening or closing to the presence of God.”

The 31-year-old new mom, who received her fine art degree from California’s Biola University, turned the difficulty of object hunting with a baby in tow into an opportunity to spend time on her other passion: painting. She shares her studio with her woodworker husband, often using his woodworking tools to create her pieces.

– Oregon Home Magazine, July-Aug. 2003, pg. 20

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