Unmute
Shelby Hubbard for @warp_dmv
Like many great DC stories, at a pivotal point, two people meet at a bar. One is a visual artist, one is a sound artist. They strike up a conversation that morphs into a collaboration. Briget Heidmous has a project in mind to translate her painting into sound. Bruce Copening, a collector of auditory experiences, was open to the task. Together they create one multi-sensory work attempting to capture the feeling of an “Aha!” moment.
This collaboration was one of two experimental works, the other was created through a similar collaborative process with beatmaker Magnus Andretti. Both painting/soundscape pairs were exhibited until Jan. 25 at Culture House DC, the church turned event and exhibition venue. Built in 1886, Friendship Baptist Church would sit empty for 20 years before eventually undergoing the vibrant HENSE treatment it’s now known for.
Artists who exhibit at Culture House are given a stipend and almost complete free reign of the gallery space to install and exhibit. Because Culture House operates as a multi-use event space, some subject matter is off limits and the venue itself can be hard to access with its few open hours on Saturdays. But for artists in DC, especially emerging artists, creative control and literal space to show work is rare and precious. A 2022 survey conducted by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities found the top two key needs identified by “arts and cultural sector stakeholders” were space to exhibit and financial resources to create.
For Gallery Director and long-time DC resident Cicie Sattarnilasskorn, it is important to use the space to uplift artists who otherwise might be overlooked. Working intentionally with local DC artists for the last 10 plus years, she’s noticed that they often go unrecognized while institutional and international behemoths attract crowds and support. But, she says, there is a historic, robust arts community in DC filled with diverse artists, with particular perspectives “doing serious work with a clear purpose.”
“I believe artists are always doing the important work of asking questions and forcing us to see ourselves.” Sattarnilasskorn continued, “It's not just my responsibility [to uplift artists] but it's a great privilege for me to be able to do that, and I appreciate that I'm able to do that at a place like Culture House.”
The central purpose of Heidmous’ quest to translate the visual to auditory came from experiencing “early and severe vision decline that went undetected. This led to being held back in school, unnecessary disciplinary actions, and social disconnection. This problem was compounded by being blonde and a girl—two things associated with dumbness and submission in the 1990s. This inspires the exhibition title: Legally Blindish.”
The title, a play on Legally Blonde and legally blind, even using the same font as the film, attempts a lighthearted entry into examining the “human-decentered systems” that guarantee neither healthcare nor vision care. While Heidmous is not legally blind now, this early experience was formative to this work. Humor can be an effective multi-purpose tool, but in this case, it distracts and undermines the sincerity, research, and collaboration that elaborates on art and accessibility.
When I entered the gallery, a pedestal stood on the left with headphones resting on top, their wires suspended from the ceiling. It was positioned at an angle from the painting which was mounted on the center wall in the exhibition space. It is the first viewable Aha Moment painting.
Rendered in acrylic is an abstract depiction of the moment when an idea coalesces. In the top quarter of the portrait-oriented painting are large swaths of peachy orange interrupted by a crackling dark blue breaking the halves like a river through a landmass. The dark blue at the top center of the painting shifts from angular definition to washed out, faded blues shaded by its peachy surroundings. The blue lines, branching from the center, turn into fine veins beneath peach flesh. The bottom of the painting fully breaks from the upper half revealing turquoise. The dark blue rivulets feed into a mass at the bottom right. The peach turns into vines on the surface of dark blue, inverting the top half of the painting. At the meeting of the dark blue and the peach halves, turquoise colors and angular faceted forms create chaos, revealing the source of the pivotal crack.
Heidmous said the paintings and overall work consider "the liminal space and ineffability of experience when the nervous system expands and contracts when an aha moment strikes."
When creating the work, she wondered, “What could happen in the physical world with color, with line, with space that could kind of be representative of that a-ha moment, that quickness?”
Each visual exploration of that central question was paired with a sound artist. Andretti and Copening were both paid for their work. They have stylistically different approaches to sound, often working with video or podcast production. Both are familiar with collaborative and responsive processes and in some ways this process was no different than any other sound project. Copening and Heidmous would listen and talk through each iteration, getting closer to answering the question: “ Does this piece of music, does this soundscape, evoke in me a similar sort of tension, interest, curiosity, feel as looking at the painting?”
They would soon create what the artist called a “living direct translation” from visual to auditory. Looking at the painting while listening, I began to trace the sound over the dark blue rivulets. Through the headphones a grainy record plays a backward repeating rhythm while waves crash through one side of the headphones to the other, then sandy shushes, the thud, thud, thud of a train on a track, then a chime - all while the waves continually crash. The rhythmic layers build into a crescendo, subside, and repeat. I study the break, where the peach halves crack to blue and, thanks to Copening, I can hear them separate.
This translation considers accessibility not in terms of an alternative or secondary experience but as an embedded part of the work. Abstraction, Heidmous said, lends itself well to multiple translations.
Typically, accessibility measures in galleries should include ADA compliance, touch tours, ASL programming, verbal description tours, and captioning availability offering many entry points into experiencing artwork. (And it should include seating! Comfortable seating!) While these accessibility measures offer technical insight into the work, and can evoke deeper insight and connection, are there more ways to capture the feeling an artwork can elicit?
“There's not really a touch point in place for people with blindness, deafness, and other modal challenges to experience artwork in the way that art is meant to be experienced, which is to give you a visceral, emotional, sensitive, and connective experience,” said Heidmous.
The artist sits in front of the second Aha! Moment painting.
Copening likened the translation of the painting to watching a movie. The audio and visuals of a film facilitate a multi-sensory experience that envelopes a moviegoer into the world of the film. With these translations, Heidmous, Copening, and Andretti are offering an option where there typically is not one.
Heidmous hopes that the experience leaves people “feeling more curious about themselves and the world and art in general; inspired to be more curious or to go do the thing that they've been wanting to do.”
Disclosure: Briget Heidmous is the Brand Manager for Culture House and was invited to exhibit to fill an exhibition slot that was unexpectedly vacated.
Learn more about the artist here: www.briget-heidmous.com
Editing support for this article was provided by Joshua Clements.