Remember those old-school I Spy books? I coveted the "Mystery" and "Fantasy" versions, almost wanting to be inside those made-up places (even though some had a creepy vibe). When I first saw Heidi Clapp-Temple's work, I immediately though of those books from my childhood, but instead of looking for the teacup-shaped button in a dusty attic scene, you're spying for meaning.
"It’s about the objectification of women and how 'we' collectively sort of sell our souls to look like this ideal woman that society is trying to cram down our throats. It starts pretty much the day we get our first Barbie, and now it’s inescapable with advertisements online targeting women."
Originally from New Hampshire, Clapp-Temple has been a resident of Florida for the past four years. She received her B.F.A. in Fine Art Photography from Syracuse University in 1991. She has received numerous awards, including the “Concept Photography Award” and “Best in Digital Photography Award,” from two separate exhibitions at the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts. Besides an extensive photography background, she also has experience in other mediums including sculpture, painting, drawing, jewelry, and graphic design—all of which rub off her current works. (And she just found out today that she is one of the recipients of the 2016 Arts Council of Hillsborough County Individual Artist Grants. Congratulations, girl!)
As much as Clapp-Temple is a photographer and assemblage artist, she is also a light artist, using torn tissue paper, light, and shadows to create watercolor-like splashes of washy color in her works. “It’s the tissue paper that I paint with, so to speak,” she says. She also mimics drawing techniques, as seen in her Commune series, comprised of plant photographs that can easily be mistaken for soft, romantic charcoal drawings.
Caitlin Albritton: What is your workflow like in the studio? How many shots does it take to get to the final composition?
Heidi Clapp-Temple: I start off with a sketch, so I already know in my mind what I want to do. From the sketch, I’ll make drawings and cut-outs. I then start layering in all different things — objects, paper, glass — and build it up little by little. A lot of the process is experimentation, so it requires taking out many objects from my studio to test out. I take photos along the way for reference when I look at the image in Photoshop, since the composition appears much different in person than on the screen. From there, I keep moving things that need to be changed, and it usually takes me about 300 photos to get the work where I finally want it. It’s all about continuous trial. It seems like a lot of days go by where it’s wasted effort because I wasn’t able get to where I wanted, and that’s frustrating.
My main technique is working with tissue paper, and I will rip it to get holes in ways where the light can shine through to make patterns. I also like using glass with this type of photography because of its’ transparency and the lighting effects it creates. I spend hours and hours of tedious work building three-dimensional paper sculptures for these sets. I think you have to be OCD to a certain point, but it’s sort of necessary for this type of work.
HCT: A big personal influence was a second cousin of mine, Frank Duncan. He was a painter who received two Guggenheim Fellowships. He was a legend in the family. One summer he stayed with my grandmother’s family when she was an early teen. He was her cousin. He made this watercolor painting about her that was on her wall from my earliest childhood memories. It is rather surreal, and full of stories from that summer. I was always fascinated with that painting and the fact that I was related to this very talented artist.
Surrealism has always had a great appeal to me. Dali was influential since I grew up seeing his work. I love the work of Joan Miro and Francis Bacon too. I have been inspired by all types of great photographers, from the documentary works of Eugene Richards, to the self-portraits of Cindy Sherman, to the surrealist work of Joel-Peter Witkin. Music and film are a big part of my life, too. Hitchcock, Fellini, Polanski are all filmmakers I love.
CA: What was your experience at Syracuse like?
HCT: Back when I was in college, digital work was scorned upon. I did a lot of darkroom work with multiple negatives where I’d work with four different enlargers. You couldn’t preview what you were going to get, so I wasted so much paper and film, which was incredibly expensive. I had to waitress part-time just to pay for my weekly supplies. Towards my final year at Syracuse, I was staring to build boxes with objects in them, and photographing that.
CA: How many years have you doing these backlit assembled set pieces?
HCT: This process is something I’ve been developing for the past two years, but I think that everything I’ve done in the past has led up to this. For me, it feels like the first time in my artistic career that I’ve finally landed on it, like, “This is it.” I’ve found my voice and my language, and it feels awesome.
HCT: In the past I worked with compositing many images together in Photoshop. In my older work, I would shoot and also get images from different sources and then layer it all that way. I got to a point where I wanted to make work that transcended that type of photography. I didn’t feel like I was able to convey my message succinctly. That work was very staged and I started to feel limited by my technique. I developed a new personal language for expressing my internal thoughts. It allows me to be as abstract as I want, which is often an effective way of representing feelings. It’s like a much bigger palette to work with. So I've tried to challenge myself with these works by doing very little digital post-production work.
CA: Narration and story-telling plays a big role in your works through the dialogue between these objects and character. Can you talk specifically about one of your newest pieces, Birds of a Feather?
HCT: There was this story I heard about a girl who had this wild bird that would come to her house all the time and bring her these little gifts, like pieces of string, soda tabs, or a ring. She kept them all, and then took a photo of the hundreds of things the bird had brought her. I was so blown away by that beautiful story. I was thinking along those lines when making this piece, as if the bird had brought me those little gifts. In the center of the image, there are many little circular highlights. These represent the spirits of family and friends coming together, hence the name of the piece coming from the phrase “birds of a feather flock together.” I think of all the little objects surrounding them as their “accessories” inside of what looks like a hive.
CA: What are some of the current projects and thoughts you’ve been working on that you’re most excited about?
HCT: (speaking about Soul Food from her Brought to Light series) With this work, I was being direct about a lot of real issues. It’s very graphic. It’s about the objectification of women and how “we” collectively sort of sell our souls to look like this ideal woman that society is trying to cram down our throats. It starts pretty much the day we get our first Barbie, and now it’s inescapable with advertisements online targeting women.
CA: I appreciate that you aren’t backing down with your strong voice in these pieces, like a sort of “F you.”
HCT: I think there is some anger behind this work, but then you go back to the stereotypical problem of the “bitchy middle-aged woman.” There’s a sense of, “Why can’t she just grow old with grace, like she’s supposed to? We don’t want to hear about that.” It’s totally dismissive. It’s like you’re already legitimately angry that this is going on, and then people feel that they have a valid reason for dismissing you so it’s a double whammy.
CA: There’s some humor in that piece with the woman lying on the table, legs in the air. The humor quickly sinks into horror when you realize her legs have been chopped off and replaced with those decorative paper turkey-leg frills, and the theme of cannibalism appears. It reminds me in ways of Grimm’s Fairy Tales where they aren’t your typical utopian story — they often have some seriously sinister undertones. Each photograph has it’s own unique story, even within each of your series. Some are more cheerful than others, but overall there is a darkness of “reality” that lingers over them.
I just feel I want to be honest. I want to be truthful, and I want to bring out empathy in the audience. I don’t care about making art that’s just pretty, because anybody can make pretty artwork. This is a form of expression for me, but I want it to be about what I’m experiencing in life, whether it’s good or bad.
To see more of Heidi Clapp-Temple’s works, visit her website: heidiclapptemple.com.
Urban Dictionary defines Femme Fatale as “a woman with both intelligence and sex appeal that uses these skills to manipulate poor helpless men into doing what she wants. May cause death.” Keeping in line with this concept, the women highlighted in Caitlin Albritton's Femme Visuale series aims to highlight local women artists and show off some lesser-known talent that's been hiding in the shadows. In the art world, if it ain't big and loud, it ain't being seen (looking at you, Koons). Art as a grand spectacle leaves little room for modest, sincere, or quiet voices, especially women's voices. And I promise, we won’t bite.
This article appears in Feb 4-10, 2016.