highlight: HEATHER BOND

by Emma Riva

Heather Bond’s An Emergency in Slow Motion, on display at hair salon COMB on Liberty Avenue, uses a real $100 bill, Bond’s pet’s ashes, a Jamaican $100 note (worth $10 USD). Yes, really.

There’s a thrill to seeing an artist you’ve never interacted with before for the first time. When I really connect with a work, it comes alive in front of my eyes. Being an art critic traveling around the city on a less than ideal caffeine to empty stomach ratio without a car, it all becomes worth it for that moment when you connect with a work that explodes with talent and meaning. You meet them and you just have to write about it, even if you’re typing away in the middle of the night or in between other projects. Heather Bond is one of those artists. I met her at Michael Lotenero’s Other Worlds opening at Zynka Gallery, where she had a gorgeous bag with an embroidered figure of a naked woman of it. She then invited me to see Euphoric Character of Suggestion, her solo exhibit at COMB. I’m so glad I did.

Bond’s You Up?, at the front of COMB, recently sold to a collector on the Upper West Side and features nocturnal creatures like bats and “cactus vagina octopi.” COMB owner B Devey is also a major art collector and several of Bond’s diptychs and triptychs will be on rotation in Devey’s space even after the show goes down.

Many of Bond’s collages in Euphoric Character of Suggestion feature book covers and text from novels. “I use books that are mine from my childhood that my children have now outgrown,” she said. In Anne of Green Gables, a. mixed media collage that peeks out from behind a row of hair products, Bond puts FAT ASS NO WAIST PUT THAT THING IN MY FACE over the cover of a book in the Anne of Green Gables series. It juxtaposes an image of feminine childlike purity with the in-your-face, almost cartoonish sexuality of pop lyrics.

Another standout piece is Ominous Outcome—“I thought the story felt too personal, and then I looked at it six months later and was like ‘No one will know what this means!’ The piece speaks to coupling and romance in a way others might deem sinful,” she said. It uses tarot cards, and much of Bond’s work draw from the occult. These are mixed in with symbolism from a Catholic store next to Comb—Bond bought a rosary from the store and incorporated it into one of her pieces alongside the tarot cards and flowers.

Bond is interested in themes of wealth, disparity, and the idea of “selling your soul.” Bond’s work speaks to how for women, our selves can be constructed of materials—think Hole’s “Doll Parts” or the film The Love Witch. Women have to build up our senses of self using aesthetics in makeup, hair, clothing, and often those aesthetic messages are profoundly confusing. It’s as if you’re always putting on a costume. Bond takes abstract mixed media and neo-expressionist techniques associated often with Basquiat or figures of the like and puts a feminine touch on it. The scene that pioneered and popularized many of those techniques was a very masculine-driven one, but mixed media has a huge potential to speak to women’s spiritual, psychological, and emotional issues.

Many of Bond’s paintings remind me of Barbara Kruger or Jenny Holzer with their use of evocative text phrases and strong aesthetic sensibilities. Unlike many other mixed media artists, Bond uses natural materials like pine branches, shells, and flowers that decay over time within her collages. “The beauty industry is telling us ‘don’t age,’ but we have to accept decay,” she said. There’s something really subversive about seeing that message in a space dedicated to beauty through hairstyling. Bond studied weaving and is a member of the Fiber Arts Guild, another traditionally feminine art and space. But part of what makes her catalogue so fascinating is its versatility. There’s fiber and weaving and pine tree branches and book covers, but then also figurative work. “I’m really interested in the female nude form more than the male one,” Bond said. This shows up in Mother Oceania, in which she used pearlescent paint to creature a sensual, wet texture on the figure’s body.

The enormous Emergency in Slow Motion was originally a painting of a horse flying over a Tuscan vineyard before she painted over it, and she took the title of the painting from a biography of Diane Arbus. “She lived for her work,” Bond said. “And when she stopped being able to, her mind started to go to dark places. I think for a lot of artists, it’s like that,” she said. Bond’s work often pays tribute to women in the arts through the materials she uses and draws from. In the text on Kool Thing quotes Sonic Youth member Kim Gordon from her memoir Girl in a Band.

Bond is also inspired by other figures like Joan Didion, Erica Jong, and Francesca Goodman, as well as filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick and David Fincher. She casually drops into conversation that she was a background actor in Mindhunter. “I admire Fincher’s perfectionism and precision,” she said. Her aesthetic tastes range from John Singer Sargent to graffiti, and her ability to switch between multiple modes of visual expression shows in the composition of her paintings.

Euphoric Character of Suggestion offers a great opportunity for affordable collection, as shown in the gallery guide above. (I’m on a painting buying embargo for the moment, otherwise I would have, because look at this stuff!) Part of my goal with this highlight is to shout from the rooftops LOOK AT THIS WOMAN’S FUCKING ART. It amazes me when I get to meet someone new and fall in love with their work outside of the context of the big fairs or formal studio visits—Bond was someone whose energy I connected with, and her work spoke to that. That’s part of the beauty of the art world. “If I could say one thing about my art, it’s that I want to give people something to look at,” Bond said. She definitely succeeds in that. The show closes 11/12, but Bond is giving tours tonight (11/10) and tomorrow (11/11). Go see it, visit her studio, buy a piece. Bond’s work, like the arts in this city, is full of surprises.

Seriously, go see this show before it closes on Sunday. But you can also buy from Heather Bond on Etsy or get your hair done at COMB and see some of her work in the space.