Unconventional artist “goats” to the heart of the matter
By Hillary N. Pillows
Vancouver, WA – Shortly after her seventieth birthday, standing in her garden amidst enthusiastic weeds, Cynthia Heise told me she is excited to be showing her art at the Angst Art Gallery at 1015 Main Street this June. It has been a long road for her. Heise started life in the tiny town of Mahtomedi, Minnesota where the mosquitoes are larger than the house cats and the locals whispered about Probation Era gangsters living in her parent’s home. It was true. Ma Barker, Baby-Face Nelson and several other hoodlums had settled into the large house on the hill back in the day. They left only empty mail bags in the dirt floor basement and buried their victims in the deep end of White Bear Lake.
Although suffering from two black thumbs that doom all her garden plants – Heise is still remarkably upbeat about her art. “It has to be the goats”, she says. Goats have become a re-occurring theme along with chickens, spiders and pig heads. Some people remember her for the “Dangerous Onions” show a few years back. “That was just a spicy interlude on the way to chickens”, she quipped. Why chickens? “My mother named me after a chicken, or was it a goat?” remarked Heise, with chagrine.
Featured in the Angst show is a portrait of Ms. Heise’s great-grandfather. He was in the Cavalry during the American Civil War, but on the wrong side, hence the goat head. “Seems an appropriate representation. He used to have a regular head but I painted over it”, Heise mused. The other goats in the show are run-of-the-mill goats. Goats and cats illustrate the concept of a witches familiar. Older or uglier women have traditionally been accused of witchcraft. “Lots in my family,” the artist quipped, referring to the longevity of her female progenitors.
The people in How did we Goat Here? opening June 2, 2017 at Angst Gallery, vary from the smiling child to the golden calf representation of Heise’s band leading father. In the 1920s he donned a dress and full make-up to sing “Find me a Primitive Man” at the height of his bandleading career. Another painting, that of a Neanderthal ancestor, glares from under a wall of bats. There are witches, children, one likely alien who no doubt volunteered the one percent unknown DNA in Heise’s genetic makeup,.