Artist Interview - Amy Heller
You started out in the Washington, D.C., area but now live on Cape Cod. When did you "wash ashore?"
I’ve been spending every summer in Provincetown since I was born (my parents honeymooned there and I consider it my second ancestral home), and my husband and I moved to Provincetown year-round in 2003 and then to Orleans year-round in 2012. We love it here and don’t miss living in the city.
Amy Heller
What kind of a place is the Cape for you as an artist? As a resident? Do you flee for a break in January or are you hard-core?
It is an artist’s haven, known especially for the famous "Cape Light" in the fall. Provincetown is the oldest continuous art colony in America. Being surrounded by water, the smell of salt air, the sounds of the seashore, I can’t imagine living anywhere else. We do not flee in January. I do swim 3 times a week at my friend’s indoor pool, take lots of nature walks, and I am always visiting galleries and museums on the Cape and in the Boston and Providence
areas. We take a few trips to New York City during the year, but there’s no place like home!
Where does the timeline begin? An academic and artsy family, yes?
I was born at George Washington University Hospital, the youngest of three children and grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. When I was 3 years old, we lived in Cambridge, MA, on the Radcliffe College campus during my father's sabbatical year at Boston College. At 3, I took a painting class and was always drawing and creating as a child. We often visited art museums and science museums in Washington, and our house was filled with art, antiques, beachcombing treasures from our Provincetown summers, and two grand pianos. My mother was a concert pianist, theatre producer, and author of several books.
I went to Woodlin Elementary School, then Montgomery Hills Jr. High School, then Montgomery Blair High School, all in Silver Spring. I dated my future husband, who is a musician, in high school. We met in the school library and we found out later on that we were born in the same hospital and went to the same nursery school. We reconnected just before I was graduating from Hampshire College, in Amherst, Massachusetts, and the rest is history. I took a post-undergraduate photography class and fell in love with the medium and immediately enrolled in the 60 credit M.F.A. Photography program at George Washington University.
Any pivotal moments, formative surprises back then?
Pivotal moment: Everything happened to me when I was five. So many "origin" stories for me began at the age of five — making art, dancing, reading, writing poetry.
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