HEIDI BARKUN

I met Heidi Barkun last year at The Artist Project in Toronto, where she was one of a handful of Montrealers amid more than a hundred artists from across Canada and the U.S. An eclectic talent, she was showing another kind of work then; later I saw some of these excellent “found poems” at the housewarming party of the newly renovated condo she shares with music critic T’Cha Dunlevy. An amazing architect, Louis Pietrusiak, had helped them transform a typical Montreal apartment, second floor of a triplex, into a wonderfully airy living space. A contemporary aesthetic of buffed wood, thick beams and shell-white walls provided an excellent context for these pieces.

The beauty of worn wood, glass and cast-off iron is glorified. These works pay homage to time and chance, rescuing little bits of a still familiar past, rendering them sacred, exposing their luminosity. I like the way the thick wooden cases, meticulously constructed by Heidi in her shop, encase objects in grade A thermal windows, as if to suggest these remnants of a bygone era will never again feel the misery of a Montreal winter.

These works are icons, gentrification’s bold answer to the fausse nostalgie of people who glamorize the past, and others who are eager to forget. They are a reminder that artistic talent is first and foremost about the ability to see. And somewhere along the way, it’s also about craftsmanship – the skill to make.

- Marianne Ackerman

www.heidibarkun.com