Heather Cox: Roundels at Hudson Guild

In Dialogue

Heather Cox, a sculptor and photographer, discovered an unexpected medium in snapshots. Years ago, when she had her camera film developed, the 1-hour photo lab often provided double prints. Over time, these duplicates, along with countless other photos, accumulated in boxes. Unable to part with them, they lingered in storage—until the COVID pandemic brought a sudden shift.

During those isolated months, Heather began cutting the photos into small circles and stitching them together using a stapler. “The staples provided a quick link, a small satisfying hinge that allowed forms to grow and flex. What once filled shoeboxes now filled rooms. This work developed into my current series Roundels,” she says. In the following interview, Heather shares more about her process, inspiration, and the evolution of Roundels.

What will we see in your solo show at the Guild Gallery II, and what would you like to share about the idea behind the pieces?

Guild Gallery II shares a space in the Fulton Center of Hudson Guild, a program that provides services to older adults. It’s a lively place. The gallery is situated just off the lobby and is open during weekday hours. You can also view the work from the street-level windows. The lights stay on all night, creating a jewel box effect.

Roundels: Open Source is comprised of ornate photo sculptures and collages. The pieces balloon, stack, spill, and creep through the space. The windows are covered in tear-drop-shaped photo flourishes, evoking ornamental wrought iron. Another highlight is the back wall of the gallery, which is covered in a mosaic of dimensional photo “wallpaper” over which smaller collages reside.

The title Roundels evokes a circular charge, a rounded element, or a short poem: an apt moniker for hundreds of vintage photographs cut into thousands of small circles, leaving only glimpses of the original image. Long-ago birthdays, vacations, and sunsets become a mosaic of color, tone, and pattern. “Roundels” is a love song to the once ubiquitous snapshot and is an attempt to transform and reimagine our fading visual memories.

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You reuse materials in your work. Tell us more about your process.

Having long exhausted my own supply of photos, I relied on donations from friends and strangers to expand the size and scope of the project, hence the Open Source subtitle. It is also a nod to the digital environments in which our images now live. Because digital photographs are now fully pixelated, they have lost some of the original richness of the Cibachrome process.

I take an old-school approach to pixelation by slicing up old photos and stapling them into idiosyncratic, sculptural photo albums. It is a playful analogue bounce through thousands of bits of information. Throughout this process, I explore the possibility of renewal, offering a chance to reflect on our fragmented past while imagining new futures.

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Roundels: Open Source at Guild Gallery II, 119 9 Ave, NYC, through January 22, 2025. There will be an artist talk on January 11 at 3 pm. @hudson_guild

About the artist: Heather Cox received her early training in book arts and photography at Mills College. She went on to study sculpture at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture and received her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She was awarded a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant in 1998 and moved to New York City, where she currently lives and works. Cox has exhibited both nationally and internationally, with solo shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Jacksonville, FL), Nina Freudenheim Gallery (Buffalo, NY), Gescheidle Gallery (Chicago, IL), Nohra Haime Gallery (New York, NY) and Miller Block Gallery (Boston, MA). @heather_cox_studio