Portland no. 4: Heidi Kirkpatrick
Thanks for visiting our series “Portland” where we celebrate the local photography community in Portland, Oregon. I’ve really enjoyed living in such a vibrate photo arts city for the past 20 years, and feel it’s time to specifically highlight our locals in this column.
Garments of Light
by Blue Mitchell
June has arrived and hopefully, in the next month, we’ll see some sunshine in Portland. And when this elusive sun stretches its rays into our atmosphere, my friend Heidi Kirkpatrick will have Potassium ferricyanide and Ferric ammonium citrate on hand, ready to make more beautiful cyanotypes.
Now that we’re rolling into summer, Kirkpatrick gets a break from the darkroom and gets to enjoy the sunroom. Even though it’s challenging to make cyanotypes in Portland, where we average 144 days of sun a year, she tells me that working in the sunlight is very important in creating her unique originals. She chooses to make her cyanotypes on fabric. “I love how the linens accept the cyanotype solution. It’s such an organic process that is unique to each piece. I spend hours fussing with the coating.” In most of her recent work, instead of coating new fabrics with cyanotype solution, she utilizes vintage clothing. “I really like working on existing materials, objects that have had a previous life.” This makes sense for Kirkpatrick because most of her subject matter also deals with nostalgia and personal history.
“My mother gives me things all the time. She sent me a pair of white gloves. I coated them with the solution and they dried in my darkroom the next day. I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to do with them, so I did as I normally do, I just go out in the yard and see what speaks to me”. Inspired by the gift from her mother, she intuitively made her first pair of cyanotype gloves. “The gloves ended up being a new and exciting aspect of my Garments of Light series and that kind of sent me into a new direction.” And this direction is fantastic! Garments of Light is delightfully eloquent, much like Kirkpatrick herself. She closes with “I am looking forward to the summer!” and I couldn’t agree more! I can’t wait to see what she brews up this year.
Author note: I met Heidi years ago at a Photolucida event and she quickly has become one of my favorite photographers and comrades. To find out more about her history, I encourage you to listen to my podcast session with her on the Diffusion Tapes.
“You really have to believe in what you’re doing. I think you must have very big shoulders and thick skin. You must be prepared for people to tell you that they don’t like what you’re doing, or they’re not interested, because you’re going to get rejected and you have to just keep pushing forward.”
I am an artist and educator living in Portland, Oregon. I was a late bloomer to photography. I moved to Portland, Oregon in 1993 (at the age of 33) from Dallas, Texas with my new “real” camera in hand. My father-in-law gave it to me, saying he saw something in my pictures that he liked. Finding myself in an unfamiliar place, with my husband working long hours and it seemingly never stopped raining, I threw myself into photography. I took every class I could enroll in and spent copious amounts of time in the darkroom. I found myself through photography and have never looked back. I have worked with a variety of photographic processes over the years and was hooked when the first image came up in the tray.
I taught high school black and white photography at a small private school in downtown Portland. I was invited for a 5-month temporary teaching position and stayed for 12 years. It was the hardest job I have ever had and by far the most rewarding. Those young people enriched my life. I stepped down from my teaching position to concentrate on my art practice and to be able to spend more time with my family.
My current photographic process is making cyanotypes in the summer in my backyard studio. When it is not sunny, I am printing film positives in my home darkroom for my photo-based 3D objects. My work addresses family, history, love, and loss.
I have exhibited widely over the last twenty years and my work is held in numerous private and public collections including The Fox Talbot Museum, Wiltshire, United Kingdom; The Harry Ransom Center, Austin, Texas; Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Springfield Museum of Art, Springfield, Ohio; The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, Louisiana; Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado; and OHSU Corporate Collection, Portland, Oregon. I was selected for the Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50 in 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014, and was recognized with the solo show award in 2012. My work was also selected for LensCulture Emerging Talent Awards Top 50 in 2014.
I am currently represented by G. Gibson Projects in Seattle, Washington, and Dina Mitrani Gallery in Miami, Florida.