Newspaper Article

An artist explores complexity and restfulness ; Anna Hepler is captivated by the way pieces come apart when freed from their moorings

Austin, April

2006

Overview

Anna Hepler's art is a triumph of opposites: Though it looks fragile, it also gives an impression of tensile strength. And although she captures the moment of an object's dissolution, she celebrates the charged particles that remain. From installations of string and colored tape to a series of delicate three-dimensional spheres made of covered florist's wire to ink drawings on stacks of Plexiglas, Ms. Hepler tries to convey the moment of controlled explosion. She takes her cue from nature, tapping natural phenomena from tiny dandelion-seed puffs to night-arcing fireworks as inspiration. Hepler has spent a good part of the past decade observing spheres in nature and attempting to translate the range of emotions they engender in her. She built crude three-dimensional models of spheres out of wire and then moved to florist's wire for its softer, more stringlike look. She drew these shapes repeatedly in pen and ink, sometimes on paper, often on Plexiglas plates. Certain pieces achieve the precision of mechanical drawings, and others feel more free-form. Hepler's methods are purposefully labor-intensive. In the DeCordova exhibition, a series of large scrolls, titled \"Conduit,\" features row upon row of panels enclosing white bubble shapes with brightly painted squiggles, knots, and dot formations inside. Hepler painted the scrolls while in South Korea on a fellowship in 1999. She laughs now at what she describes as the obsessive process involved, which brought her to the point where, in bed at night, she would see rows of panels marching behind her closed eyes.

• Publisher: The Christian Science Publishing Society (d/b/a \"The Christian Science Monitor\"), trusteeship under the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
• Subject: Hepler, Anna / Visual artists