TidesNet—Online Collections Entry Detail

DescriptionA black and white ceramic sculpture, The Castle, by artist, Anna Hepler. It stands about 14 1/2 inches high by 13 inches in diameter and dates to 2016. Hepler was born in Boston, Massachusetts 1969. She earned a B.A. degree from Oberlin College In Ohio in 1992 and an MFA degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1994. She moved to Portland, Maine in 2001 and soon afterwards to the opposite end of Maine’s coast to Eastport where she remained until 2018. She then moved to Greenfield, Massachusetts where she is currently based. A statement about her work includes: “At the heart of Hepler’s work is the thrill of making things and the excitement of training her mind and hand to manipulate unfamiliar materials. It is from this energetic center that her work radiates in many media, shapes and sizes. Hepler seeks forms in conflict – inflatable forms that breathe and are in constant motion, or latticed volumes that collapse perceptually in space. Quiet and intuitive, these restless sculptures are the molecular structure or alphabet with which she composes a visual vocabulary.” She has exhibited widely and held numerous artist residencies. Her solo exhibitions include Portland Museum of Art (Maine), the Roswell Museum of Art (New Mexico) and the Suyama Space (Seattle). In 2016, she created a large scale art installation called Undertow within the Tides Institute’s North Church project space. That same year she was awarded a fellowship by United States Artists. This sculpture was a gift of the artist to the Tides Institute in 2022.