Annie Heckman is a visual artist, curator, educator who lives in Chicago with her husband. Recently I talked with Heckman about her artistic influences, her work at an Artist Guide at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and Love Letters to Antarctica.

DG: How did you first get interested in art?

AH: My art teacher in grade school was fascinating to me, a warm and thoughtful presence, and she taught us to work with weaving, ceramics, drawing, painting, and set design. This class was my favorite part of school, and I drew at home on my own, but didn’t have a consistent way of practicing.

DG: What are some other early memories that you have, regarding your early exposure to art?

AH: When I was in fifth grade my friend brought me along to her after-school art class at an artist’s storefront studio on the northwest side of Chicago. My family sent me for lessons once a week, sometimes twice a week, for the next several years, through high school. I worked with an artist instructor there and became engaged enough with drawing to want to pursue art in college.

DG: Who would you say are some of your influences, in terms of visual art?

AH: In my reading and early time in college I was always looking at Kiki Smith and Louise Bourgeois – I was drawn to expressive but not expressionist use of line, with some leaning toward text and figuration. I saw William Kentridge’s solo exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in 2001 (after missing his talk when I had the flu) and was floored, mostly excited that there was a relevant way of working with the observational and technical skills I had learned growing up, although I didn’t start working in animation until years later.

DG: How did your studies at UIC affect your artistic trajectory?

AH: My professors were a huge influence on me, and beyond their individual advice to me I looked up to them as artists. Going to UIC, I looked up to Phyllis Bramson, Molly Briggs, Susan Sensemann, Anne Karsten, Rodney Carswell, Kerry James Marshall, and Tony Tasset. At NYU I worked with John Torreano, Jesse Bransford, Peter Campus, Katy Schimert, and I took a class with Kiki Smith as well. The opportunity to work directly with an artist after learning about her work from books as a young student was a big deal to me, and in general I feel that one of the most important things my professors taught me was the raw commitment needed to be an artist.

DG: Who is one teacher in particular, who has influenced your approach toward teaching?

AH: In my advanced painting class, Susan Sensemann took us seriously as individual artists and met with us about our projects and writings. This set the tone for me in terms of valuing my own time and being thoughtful with studio visits. One day when Susan was meeting with me and we were discussing my future plans, she said that I would always be an artist. Her confidence in my future has added to my resolve.

DG: How did that experience with Professor Sensemann influence you?

AH: This moment has influenced my teaching because I feel as though it’s possible to become obsessed with developing student’s competencies and testing for skills, but at the end of the day they are alone with themselves and reflect on their futures like all of us. Having someone who believes in you, not in the forced sense of building self-esteem, but someone who truly trusts that you are going to move forward with strength, can create a heightened platform for all the inevitable struggles that come up. As an adult I feel privileged when young people share their thoughts and goals with me, and offering them a long view and showing them some piece of what work needs to be done is part of a mutually beneficial exchange. If I have big expectations for my students’ futures, they notice, and I think that Susan’s words helped me set my course.

DG: What is one recent project you've worked on, as an art educator? 

AH: In my work at the Museum of Contemporary Art I just wrapped up a season of school tours exploring the Production Site and Rewind exhibits. As Artist Guides we focus on using inquiry and discussion with students to make relevant connections to the artworks. Recently I’ve been interested in how the mystery, spy, detective, and forensics genres are some of the most salient popular models we have for critical thinking and observation. These relate to my own work and interests, and almost all of my students have some connection to those genres in TV and books.

DG: What are some other aspects of your recent work with the MCA that you find interesting? 

AH: We discuss why those genres are so popular among us, what kind of power comes with the ability to investigate, and talk about how we can apply that empowering stance to investigating our surroundings critically in a museum. Then our exercises include focusing on observation, following motion, looking for details and traces of the artist’s marks, determining intent, recreating the way an object was made, and using curiosity and an interest in getting beyond the obvious exterior as a stance when approaching an artwork. This was most clearly applicable in Production Site with Nikhil Chopra’s work, where he actually asked that viewers approach the post-performance installation as forensic investigators, but I have also found it broadly useful as a way to both understand artworks and to be critical of how and why we look at objects.

DG: Would you describe an aspect of your work at the MCA?  

AH: Working with this modeling of critical investigation strategies, one of my most rewarding activities has involved using partnership as a way to approach an artwork. When looking at Alfredo Jaar’s Geography = War, I ask students to divide up into pairs and approach the artwork taking notes and coming up with a question to ask the larger group. After several minutes of the partners working together, they share out their questions, often approaching the artwork sensitively and with many questions already answered between them. They formulate their questions in a way that facilitates larger discussion of the issues in the artwork, such as, "Why did he put the photos reflected in water instead of up on the wall?" In general I have found that the more I put the students in charge of their own conversations, in a structured way, the more confident they become in interpreting and questioning their experiences.

DG: What projects are you working on these days?

AH: I’m working on an animation and installation project called Love Letters to Antarctica, together with artist Lorien Jordan at Swimming Pool Project Space in Chicago, opening August 21 this year. I received an Illinois Arts Council grant to complete this work, as well as a CAAP grant from the city of Chicago last year to make three of the iceberg sculptures, and with this support I’m able to dive in and make an entire world that glows in the dark. I’m working to connect the project up both locally with community groups around the space and with Antarctic researchers and enthusiasts.

DG: What's one thing that you find so interesting about "Love Letters to Antarctica"?

AH: This work is especially exciting for me because of all the planning that goes into it and because it is forcing me to stretch my definitions of what constitutes a limit. Often I’m looking at limit points of human experience, like love and death, to drive my projects, and with Love Letters I’m also looking at the pole as a geographic limit point and delving into what that has meant for explorers and thinkers.