Heather Dew Oaksen

Heather Dew Oaksen is a media artist and educator whose experimental work explores the realms of both fiction and non-fiction, and functions in communities in unexpected ways. Much of her recent media installation work has been sited in places where the public “finds” the work informally – as they are traveling, shopping, commuting, or leafing through a periodical in the library. Heather has received many awards for her work which has been exhibited throughout the United States and Canada. She is a professor of new media at Cornish College of the Arts and one of the founders of 911Media Arts Center.

Heather received 2012 GAP Award funding to support the creation of a cohesive distribution package for the film, Minor Differences. DVDS, study guides, and associated print materials will help to market the film, which focuses on the powerful first-person narratives of five former juvenile offenders. Traditional distribution methods and grassroots marketing will help illuminate the message of the project and assist social action partners in their efforts to promote awareness, develop audience engagement, and advocate for large scale social change in ways juveniles are treated in society.

Heather received 2009 GAP Award funding to go towards production costs for a location shooting of interviews throughout the state for the feature documentary, It’s About Time. The project will be composed of tales told from the first-person point of view occurring over a period of 15 years. Heather’s link to the subjects interviewed creates the foundation for the piece. By crosscutting footage between two time frames, audiences are submitted to the tragic and arguably inevitable detour those human characters follow from young delinquent to repeat offender.

Heather received 2005 GAP Award funding to support her work-in-progress The Still Point, a four-channel video and sound installation utilizing projected video imagery that explores relationships between the body, memory and architecture through non-linear time and space. Funds will be used to purchase the necessary projectors, creating “images and experiences not possible without technological support, including image simultaneity, extreme close-up views, and the manipulation of perceived time.”

Heather also received a 1999 Fellowship, and GAP Awards in 1997 and 1998 from Artist Trust.