Heidi Schwegler brings enigmatic new meanings to superannuated objects by reimagining them as sculptures. “When something has been severed from its context and is no longer bound by function and ownership, this anonymity and ambiguity renders it pervious to the imagination,” she explained to Avantika Bawa, an interviewer from the publication Drain, in 2014. Schwegler was born in San Antonio, Texas. After graduating with her MFA from the University of Oregon in 1998 and working as an instructor in higher arts education for two decades in the Pacific Northwest, she moved to the Mojave Desert where she founded the Yucca Valley Material Lab in 2019. The Material Lab is a non-profit experimental space with an invitational residency and gallery. Her artwork has been exhibited widely in the US and Europe, and she has received fellowships from MacDowell, the Oregon Arts Commission, and the Ford Family Foundation.

Her work in the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art’s permanent collection was created by casting a discarded cooler in glass, a technique that is typical of her practice. “Casting a recognizable form in a material that is antithetical to its function forces you to renegotiate your understanding of the object,” she explained to Bawa. “Because of their context and the fact that they no longer function in the way you originally understood them, you have to shift your relationship to them. And when they’re placed in a space where you are only allowed to look, and not touch them, you become aware of them in a different and more engaged way.”

http://drainmag.com/peripheral-ruin-an-interview-with-heidi-schwegler/