light concentric side

source: artslant

Heather Carson was born and raised in Los Angeles. She has designed lighting in the US and Internationally for over 200 productions in theatre, opera, dance, concert and video primarily in downtown NY Theatre and European avant-garde opera. Carson was head of the lighting programs at Penn State and Cal Arts and has taught at NYU, Smith College, Bard College, Sci-Arc, UCSD and UCLA. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and prizes including the 1999 Rome Prize, the 2004 New York Foundation for the Arts Artists Fellowship in Architecture/Environmental Structures and the 2011 City of Los Angeles (COLA) Individual Artist Fellowship. Heather Carson lives and works in L.A.

“My goal is to separate out light as subject. Rather than being the means that enables you to see something else, I want the light itself to be what you are seeing. Not just the units, or what they are lighting, but the implied connection between the two.” For the last 29 years in the theatre she has used non- traditional equipment so that the aesthetic is determined by the specificity of the choice of materials. Long concerned with space not place, where lights are placed is the critical starting point. Instead of starting with a picture in mind, the lights are placed based upon a rigorous analysis of space, which then determines the results. She draws inspiration from contemporary physics, deconstructivist architecture, and minimalism in sculpture – rather that literature – to think about structures for light. Wanting to go further, she started making her own work and calls it Light Action.

In 1995 she made her first piece “up/Down” as part of Streb’s Action:Occupation which re-opened The Temporary Contemporary Museum (MOCA) in Los Angeles. In 1997 she received a fellowship to attend The Skowhegan Art Program. In 1998 she received The Rome Prize. She returned to Los Angeles in 2004 to head the lighting program at Cal Arts and commit to a studio practice. Her installation work has been seen at the American Academy in Rome, The Tenement Museum in New York, The ADC Gallery in New York, the Arena 1 Gallery at the Santa Monica Airport, Phantom Galleries Los Angeles, The Torrance Art Musueum and Ace Gallery Los Angeles.

In addition to the 1999 Rome Prize and the 1997 Fellowship from the Skowhegan Art Program, she has received the 1998 and 2004 New York Foundation for the Arts Artists Fellowship in Architecture/Environmental Structures and a 1999 Graham Foundation Grant for Advanced of the Fine Arts. Since returning to L.A., she had received a 2006 ARC Grant from The Durfee Foundation, a 2007 Downtown Artist Project Grant and a 2011 City of Los Angeles (COLA) Individual Artist Fellowship. She received her first public art commission from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs to create a large scale light installation for the Vine Street Parking Garage currently going up in Hollywood across from the new W Hotel.
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source: laartstream

LA-based sculptor and installation artist Heather Carson was once a NY-based theatrical lighting designer whose experimental use of industrial equipment led her to leave the stage for storefronts, airplane hangars, parking lots, and galleries – pursuing her affection for the abstract mathematical structure of lighting-grids and the optical character of indoor/outdoor and spatial perception. Comparisons to Irwin, Flavin, Turrell, and Judd are inevitable, but this work is increasingly about the properties and limitations unique to the electric medium. Watch for her at May’s COLA 2011 show.