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The Ruby is a catalyst for creativity and a home for making art at Duke.
Date & Time
April 3, 2020 at 12:00 pm1:00 pm
Admission
Free; open to all. Light lunch provided.
Venue
Ruby Lounge at the Rubenstein Arts Center
2020 Campus Drive
Durham, NC 27705 United States
Description

In order to minimize health and safety risks from COVID-19 to our patrons, the larger community, and Duke students, faculty, and staff, Duke University has adopted new policies on spring semester classes, residential life, travel, events, and campus visitors. In keeping with the university’s directives, we are cancelling public events at the Rubenstein Arts Center through April 20. More information.

Independent artist Heather Gordon developed the project Forest for the Trees while in residence at the Rubenstein Arts Center (Jul 15–Aug 23 2019). Join Gordon to learn how she used orphaned data from Duke Forest archives to both expand her artistic practice and inform her creative output with a more outward looking stance.

In her artwork, Gordon uses both personal and public data to construct origami folding patterns to show the shape of a specific narrative. For her Ruby Friday presentation, Gordon will trace the origins of her ideas about the ambiguities of numbers, the acquisition of meaning, and the fear of unperceived existence. Specifically, she will speak to how and why she creates geometric folding patterns to create visual information structures and give insight into her rule-based methods and data sets (including binary conversions, date and time intervals, and geographic locations).

About the Speaker

Image by Robert Zimmerman.

Born in 1967, Heather Gordon is the daughter of a financial analyst and a logistician. Her work explores the softness of numbers, the acquisition of meaning, and the narrative possibilities of geometry.

Heather received her B.F.A. from the University of Florida in 1990 and her M.F.A from New Mexico State University in 1995. She lives and works in Knightdale, NC. She has produced installation works at the North Carolina Museum of Art, CAM Raleigh, the Ackland Art Museum, 21C, the Dillon in Raleigh, and the Rubenstein Arts Center at Duke University. Her paintings and drawings are in the permanent collections of Fidelity Investments, Credit Suisse, the Ackland Art Museum, and other notable collections. She has exhibited her work at numerous museums and galleries, and collaborates with other artists within nontraditional venues to expand the possibilities of her work. In 2014, Gordon received an North Carolina Artist Fellowship and has been a full-time artist since 2015.

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