Exploring

About Exploring

This contemporary ceramic wall art was created by Heather Allen Hietala.

The finely crafted wood-fired ceramics of Heather Allen Hietala are designed to tell a compelling story. Using an innovative mix of materials—clay, textiles, wire and natural elements Hietala uses the form of the vessel as a symbol for life’s journey and as a metaphor for ‘self’.
In this beautiful composition, five canoe shaped objects are assembled in a line beside one another. Between each vessel are a series of ‘paddle-like’ metal pieces—each one bearing a unique design.
The vessels are also unique—hand formed in clay, they are rendered in the rich earthy colours of brown, sienna, black, white, and silver. Each vessel features distinctive detailing--the crushed glass in a vivid blue-green in one vessel appears jewel-like and draws the viewer’s eye.

“Life is a constant journey of balancing and rebalancing. This work is about motion and stillness, balance and counterbalance, of soft and hard materials, of delicate and strong, mass versus line, 2D versus 3D, stillness versus movement, large versus small and heavy versus light.” Heather Allen Hietala

Heather Allen Hietala studied painting and sculpture at the University of New Hampshire and textiles at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.
Hietala furthered her studies at Penland School of Crafts, Haystack, and Arrowmont in the US. Her work has been shown in Canada, the US, France and Singapore, and is held in collections worldwide. She has also taught and lectured in the US, Canada, Japan, Singapore, Thailand and Nepal.