Let me explain - I have had a few names. As textile artist Heather Allen I was known for colorful architectural textiles. In 2003 I married and took the name Heather Allen-Swarttouw, the name coincided with a new direction in my work. In 2013 I became Heather (Lindsey Allen) Hietala. Hietala is my Finnish grandmother’s maiden name and means “place of sand” a fitting name for someone who has always been drawn to where the land meets the sea.

My art distills and expresses my journey through life. With a singular voice I explore form, purpose, and design thru experimentation with a diverse range of materials. I have a unique way of using intuition and experience to guide me, engaging in a dialogue that explores relationships and the cyclical nature of life. I am an innovator across many mediums; including wood and salt-fired ceramics, cloth, wire, paper, gut and natural materials from my orchard garden.

For many years interior architecture was the muse for my colorful work in textiles. Stairways alluded to a journey, becoming metaphors for expressing various paths, transitions, and thresholds within life's experiences. Like staircases, boats are universal, evoking mystery, inquiry and represent the universal journey we are all on. Canoes, paddles, sailboats, ferries, seedpods, weaving shuttles, and kayaks are part of my personal history. The vessel is all its many forms is now my muse. For me they evoke a universal sense of journey, symbolize the self and can be a metaphor of interior and exterior, of protection and containment, of transport and journey. They are both universal and personal.

My work explores relationships and inter-relationships between individual pieces, their materials, forms and ideas. A dialogue is created by the contrast of 2D and 3D, of male and female, of clay and cloth, of hard and soft, of line and form. The negative spaces and shadows enter into the dialogue, extending the pieces and representing the unsaid between individuals or the spiritual world. I am interested in duality and the idea of two (or more) things that are intrinsically bound together, made by the same hand. Created separately, individual pieces are presented in pairs or groupings that strengthen and highlight this sense of similarity and contrast.

My work can be seen at Momentum Gallery, Asheville, NC and Oeno Gallery, Bloomfield, Ontario, Canada.

Contact: heatherhietala@gmail.com