Heather Parrish, “Scar”, polymer photogravure, image: 8 x 22 in., Paper: 22 x 30 in

“...a twist of water asking a question” from River Moons by Carl Sandberg

Opening Exhibition: Sunday, June 12 2 - 5 pm

Bearing the name of Austin’s first city planner, this cretaceous limestone waterway is inscribed with legacies of racialized division and displacement. As an Austin native with family traces to the city’s founding, artist Heather Parrish explores these threads through historical layers of terrain and urban development. Her exhibition at Flatbed uses images sourced from historic photographs of Waller Creek, remembered (sometimes forgotten) as a dividing border line that runs through the city of Austin.

Heather Parrish employs printmaking, experimental photography, collage and installation to unsettle simple binaries and consider complex embodiments of boundaries.  Rather than firm and fixed, she explores the dynamic potentialities of boundaries as porous sites of exchange. Born in Austin, Texas, she spent formative years of her childhood in Southeast Asia. This experience underlies a heightened sensitivity to negotiations of belonging, identity, and connection to land. Collaboration is also central to her art practice including projects with scientists, filmmakers, poets, and activists, bees, microbes, canals, creeks and other waterways. Parrish received an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Notre Dame and a BA in Kinesiology from the University of Texas at Austin. She has exhibited work in the United States and internationally and is currently an Assistant Professor of Printmaking at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, IA.