Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 8, 1995 TAG: 9510100019
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
She always has been fascinated by building and construction. In fact, she says it's a cornerstone of her work as an artist.
Heil, who is an associate professor of art at Roanoke College, uses computers to combine photographs, drawings and other images into a series of original layered collages.
But her fascination with building doesn't stop there. It's also a cornerstone of her own identity, she says, traceable to her family's immigration from post-war Germany and her subsequent upbringing in Louisville, Ky.
Heil's father was a home builder and craftsman. Her mother was a homemaker who raised five children.
Heil moved from Germany with her family when she was 1 year old. At the time, Germany was undergoing a painful reconstruction period in the years after World War II, and Heil remembers that talk of Germany's rebuilding was a constant topic of family conversation.
Family photographs of Germany also had a profound influence, she says. ``They were real important because they were the only records we had of our life there.''
Later, it was this influence that helped inspire her to become a photographer and to incorporate photography more into her art. It followed, too, that in her photography she always has been drawn to things under construction or reconstruction.
Her interest in photography also came after her work as an illustrator was headed in that direction. ``My drawings started to look like they were done by machines,'' she says.
The ``40-something" Heil has a bachelor's degree in art from the University of Louisville and a master of fine arts degree in printmaking and drawing from Northern Illinois University.
She has been showing her artwork professionally since 1978. Her most recent exhibition was at the Garbage Art Show last year at the Roanoke Valley Resource Authority Transfer Station.
She joined the faculty at Roanoke College in 1981.
Heil sees computers primarily as an artist's tool, like a paint brush or pen. But they can be more, she says.
As a tool, she uses the computer to electronically cut-and-paste pieces of different photographs and illustrations together into a kind of abstract collage.
Beyond that, she says the computer opens up the imagination, allowing her to create images she can picture in her mind but might have had trouble piecing together before the digital age.
This kind of computer-assisted art is a field Heil has remained excited about for the more than 15 years since she first started using computers in her work.
``Partly because it's a medium of expression that's growing and it has a constant potential for growth,'' she says. ``A lot of artists have tested the limits of their medium.''
The constant change that comes with that growth is equally appealing to Heil. She says she is as interested in the process of using the computer to shape an image as she is in the actual image or final piece of artwork itself.
``I don't mind what some people might call failures,'' she said. ``I like problems.''
It can be disconcerting sometimes, she says. But that's where the thrill is.
``It's so new, so cutting edge that it will always feel like the earth is moving under your feet.''
by CNB