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Heather Freitas

heatherfreitas.com

Heather Freitas, a stunning world renowned and award winning mixed media artist who employs recycled materials, has a cause. Freitas says she found her calling in February 2016 when she was preparing for the WHAM West Gallery Recycled Art Festival in Surprise, Arizona. It was then that she realized that her deepest passion was EcoArt, and she would become an eco-art activist. She would use recycled materials, our waste, to produce art to make statements about our problems of waste, and the human impact on our deteriorating environment.

"Deforestation, GMO’s, a plastic wasteland and PCB’s along with DDT still reside around us and will continue to impact us in the long run building to a point where at one time there may be no turning back,” she says in her Bio.

In explaining Wasteland, she writes, “All around us there are hidden toxins that are damaging not only our environment and everything in it, but us as well. The worst part? We are the ones creating most of these toxins.”

Freitas’ work is as impressive as it is beautiful. She is to be commended for using recycled materials, an exciting way of creating art that is growing in popularity. But that she uses those recycled materials to drive home to us the need to recycle, because those very materials are crippling our environment, is doubly impressive.

Freitas says it’s important to realize how influential art can be in making a difference in the world. Art should not only “document the times” but bring awareness to the need to formulate real solutions to critical contemporary issues. “It is said that one person can not change the world, but it is with my deepest hopes that my artwork can.”

By: Ione Lewis

 

Artist Statement

The world around us is always changing and ever evolving, but in today's centuary it may be for the worst. Deforestation, GMO's, a plastic wasteland and PCB's along with DDT still reside around us and will continue to impact us in the long run building to a point where at one time there may be no turning back. It is stated that one person can not change the world but artist Heather Freitas states that "it is with my deepest hopes that my artwork can. Art has created movements and implemented change through history, why not now? Why not me?"

Freitas currently resides in Phoenix, Arizona where she is known for creating work out of primarily recycled media to, as the artist states " help people become more aware about the issues that we will face in the fufutre and allow them to see the beauty that can come from recycling." The artist explores everything from history to human emotion in response to our deteriorating environment, and it is our hope as hers that we can lead the way and start a new movement that preserves our living and future generations on this planet as well as the life that resides around us.

Description of Work for She Tempe

While the works of Heather Freitas are created out of primarily recycled media, in most cases to spread awareness about environmental sustainability and concerns, the artist also focuses on critical contemporary issues surrounding gender discrimination and mental health issues.

The collection of bodies of work represented in "She Tempe" focus and touch on each of these areas with the inclusion of Freitas' Healing Process Collection, Wasteland Collection, Maleri Collection and her Marionettes and Masquerades collection.

No matter how subtle or blatantly obvious, each of Freitas' work has significant meaning.  What do you see? How does it move you? Like artists before can these pieces evoke change within you?