“Every piece of abstract art that I make has a back story,” says Mary Heilmann, who relays youthful fantasies of wanting to be a Catholic martyr, her childhood dream to become an artist, as well as the antagonism she experienced in school when transitioning from pottery to painting. Shown completing a new body of work, which includes the shaped canvas Two Lane Blacktop (2008), the segment begins in the artist’s secluded Bridgehampton studio on Long Island. “There are two realities going on in the same painting,” she explains, referencing the collision of deep and shallow space in a single work, the painting as both physical object and pictorial depiction, and the final abstraction and its often fanciful, poetic title. “My spiritual life is very important to me and I think the artworks are icons,” says Heilmann, who believes in the ecumenical power of art to “transport a person in a soulful, rich way, without having any fear of punishment or Hell or sin.” The segment also features scenes from Heilmann’s video slideshow Her Life and her touring retrospective To Be Someone (2008) at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, where she’s designed colorful chairs on wheels that viewers can use to relax, meditate, or socialize with one another and have “a conversation through the work.”

Mary Heilmann

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Description: Production still © Art21, Inc. 2009 Art in the Twenty-First Century Season 5 | Episode 2: Fantasy