Anna Hepler (b. 1969) is based in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Her work, which is both hand-held and architectural in scale, overturns first impressions – wire forms flatten into drawings, clay impersonates metal, plywood coils like rope, plastic inhales and exhales. Hepler values embarrassment, uncertainty, blunder, and fragility as active agents in her studio process.
Trained as a printmaker, Hepler finds translations from one material to another, from 3D to 2D and back again, as natural to her studio process: A woodblock becomes a sculpture, a sculpture becomes a still life object, a print is cut and recombined as a collage showing evident woodgrain, the lines blur between what we see and what we know. Pattern and form, shadow and material, presence and absence collide in her work.
A former Henry Luce Foundation fellow in Seoul, South Korea, she has completed residencies at the Roswell Artist-In-Residence program, Tamarind Institute, Nova Scotia College of Art & Design, Archie Bray Foundation, Surf Point Foundation, Montello Foundation, and at MacDowell. In 2016 Anna Hepler was awarded a fellowship by United States Artists, and more recently has received support from the Harpo Foundation, Nancy Graves Foundation, Gottlieb Foundation, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
Her work can be found in the collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Tate Modern in London, England, and the Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Maine, amongst others.