Exhibition Description

Megan Heeres: Tending Time
September 9 – October 7, 2023

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Matéria is pleased to present Tending Time, a solo exhibition of all new works by Detroit-based artist Megan Heeres.

“A slab of concrete with its aggregate rock and lime, is a slice of earth’s ancient history from a timescale that we can barely comprehend. The Japanese knotweed plants, all around Detroit, grow at a break-neck pace that can take down a 50-year-old tree in a matter of a few months. I create handmade paper pulp from plants, a deliberate and repetitive process that forces me to slow down. Neighborhoods in Detroit are contending with a new sense of time, as development that didn’t exist a decade ago is moving in and moving quickly, changing the places people have come to know.”

In Tending Time, Heeres explores these different timescales through materiality and form. The works in the exhibition are a reflection of the time she has spent at the gallery and the site that surrounds it.

Heeres engages in the act of tending as she gathers materials from the site and pays attention to the forms they may become. In the resulting works, she intends to honor the energy–-derived from both earthen and human efforts–that have shaped and have been shaped by a place. Heeres wants visitors to experience joy and wonder, and perhaps, to imagine a different future for how we live in our places with nature and one another.

A native Michigander, Megan Heeres returned home from the West Coast in 2007 to study at Cranbrook Academy of Art where she earned her Master of Fine Art in 2009. Megan has been involved in the Detroit arts community as an advocate, volunteer, and teacher, all roles she plays currently with her Invasive Paper Project.  She participates in projects locally and nationally, most recently at the Max M. Fisher Center in Detroit and the Salina Art Center in Kansas. Megan has been an artist-in-residence at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences, the Michele Schara Residency at the Brightmoor Makerspace, the Ragdale Foundation, the Women’s International Study Center and the Santa Fe Art Institute.