still—moving brings together a series of stitched textiles that chart a period of suspended time and stalled movement. Each embroidered orb floats or drifts within its field, propelled by a rotational energy as if still forming, still finding its place. Viewed close up, variations between the tiny stitches become distinct, imperfect, tender. Trusting in a rhythm set by her materials, she seeks a kind of restless coherence in the form. For Heather Watkins, this process is both meditative and obsessive—it requires and reveals different kinds of attention. Like unwitting filters, these works absorb and transmit time. 

Heather Watkins lives and works in Portland, Oregon. Her work takes many forms, oscillating between drawing and sculpture, text and textile, to explore the nature and nuance of line—as form, gesture, and sensation. She has presented exhibitions at venues including Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; lumber room, Portland, OR; Planthouse Gallery, New York, NY; Canada, New York, NY; Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, Portland, OR; and PDX Contemporary Art, Portland, OR. Her work is held in many public and private collections, including the Portland Art Museum, Miller Meigs Collection, Portland State University, Reed College, the Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer, the Rhode Island School of Design Artists’ Books Collection, and the Artists’ Book Collection of the Museum of Modern Art. She has received grants from the Oregon Arts Commission and The Ford Family Foundation. She has been awarded residencies at Caldera, Sitka Center for Art & Ecology, Oregon College of Art and Craft, Stelo Arts, Sun Valley Museum of Art, and Township10. Watkins holds an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and is represented by PDX Contemporary Art in Portland, Oregon.