Bio:
Heather Polk is a self-taught artist with a practice focused on figurative collage and abstraction. Her work has been featured in New York Magazine, Washington Post, and Cosmopolitan. She is the founder of Art C.U.R.E.S. All – C.U.R.E.S. is an acronym for “Creativity Unleashed Rewards Every Soul”. The intent of Art C.U.R.E.S. All is to encourage people to explore creative expression as a form of self-care and stress management. Heather, a graduate of Tennessee State University, has an 8-year-old son, and she works in the pharmaceutical industry. In addition to making art, she enjoys traveling, music, reading, playing brain games, watching sports, and spending time with family and friends
Heather Polk is a healthcare sales and marketing professional based in Chicago, Illinois. She is also an artist who advocates for the understanding of the therapeutic benefits of exploring and expressing creativity as a form of self-care and stress management. Heather is a mother that loves art, travel, sports, and spending quality time with family and friends, enjoys being close to the water, and appreciates home-cooked meals and fine dining.
Residency Statement/Area of Curiosity:
One of the things that have bothered me the most about quarantining at home during the Covid-19 pandemic is families NOT being able to properly memorialize their loved ones. I’ve been saddened by numerous stories of people losing loved ones to Covid-19 or other health battles that they ultimately succumbed to during the pandemic. I have been quietly curious about how families feel about the experience of losing someone and having to quarantine and honor someone virtually. It’s so unnatural not to gather and console family and friends when our loved ones transition.
My work during the Blanc Deeply Curious residency will focus on commemorating the African American lives lost during this worldwide pandemic.
In lieu of flowers, please give everyone who has died as a result of Covid-19, the good faith effort that health disparities will be tackled with more fervor, resources, and commitment than ever before. In lieu of flowers, send more young blacks to medical school so that when Black people go see a doctor, they are more likely to see someone that looks like them. In lieu of flowers, please make investments in Black communities equitably so we don’t live in food deserts, have better access to high-quality healthcare, and ensure access to capital to own our homes. In lieu of flowers, someone, everyone, please make a good faith effort to ensure “we gon be alright.”
In lieu of flowers, please keep your gestures, Black Americans are more concerned with the discontinuation of antagonism against our lives.
