A Tiny Pink Car To The Sky /  by Heidi Duncan

Delighted to help Ben celebrate and raise funds for his trip to bring music and art to kids in India!

Joanna Warren Covers Heidi's Art Show /  by Heidi Duncan

Heidi’s First Solo Art Show, NYC - April 2014

One of my old roommates and dear friends had her first solo art show in New York City recently! She studied literature in college and has pursued acting mostly, but has always had an interest in oil painting, so when she had some free time on her hands, she came up with these lovely compositions!

 

To be clear, New Yorkers rarely have “free time” on their hands, but she recognized the need to create during her downtime. When I spoke to her upon visiting the gallery, she said that she noticed that if she didn’t paint over the weekend, she would go to work on Monday feeling a bit empty and slightly depressed, so she began to make painting a regular part of her routine.

She was also very inventive when it came to space. Her little apartment barely provided living room, let alone studio space, so she began painting on small canvasses, similarly sized. She tacked a plastic sheet on her kitchen wall and hung the blank canvasses in the order we see now. She said she gave herself grace to paint and repaint, as she found things she liked or disliked. The blue piece in particular she painted over three times before she found what she was looking for. Finally, when it was time to transport, she could fairly easily move the small canvasses in multiple stages to the gallery for her show.

The one thing I really like about Heidi’s artistic story is that she didn’t plan on having an art show, instead she painted because it caused her to feel joyful and maybe even a bit more whole. Perhaps starting there for our journeys could lead to even greater things, but as I remind myself regularly, “just start”. Use what you have and where you have it. Live in the moment and create doing what comes naturally and healthily to you. I need to take a lesson in this myself.

Thanks, Heidi! And, congrats to you. :)

*Press release attached

Congrats to MCS’ Heidi Duncan – March 14th Solo Art Exhibition /  by Heidi Duncan

Congrats to MCS’ Heidi Duncan, who is not only a valued actress with us twice a week in our Tuesday/Thursday night class, but also a gifted visual artist being shown next week in her first solo art show here in NYC!

Join us in supporting Heidi at The International Arts Movement’s exhibit of THE FOREST FOR THE TREES, Friday March 14th at 6:00pm.  For details and location information, visit The International Arts Movement.

 

Heidi’s bio reads…  

Following degrees in English Language & Literature and Secondary Education, with a minor in Theatre, Duncan concentrated, by and large, on writing and acting. In 1996, she created her own business in costume design and construction, mostly focusing on historic fabric and design. She has worked in the theater and film world since 1995, acting on stages up and down the East Coast, and directing and producing shows in Boston and New York. She co-founded two acting companies, marrying the performing arts, the written arts, and education. In Venice, Italy in 2001, she began experimenting in the visual arts, eventually transitioning from pencil and ink to oils.

We’re so proud of your artistry, Heidi!

MSC Student Blog by Heidi Duncan /  by Heidi Duncan

http://matthewcorozinestudio.com/mcs-student-blog-heidi-duncan/

I started working with Matt at MCS in 2008, and after a year, stopped. I stopped because there needed to be one thing in the world I could stopper.
I came to NYC for acting, but all along, as I was telling people I was moving, I had a sneaking suspicion that I had no idea what I was in for, and it wasn’t just gonna be acting.
They say New York will chew you up and spit you out. But I don’t think that’s exactly true. A friend of mine says, “New York brings out the worst in you. But it also brings out the best in you if you can get through ‘the worst’ part.”
My worst was just ahead.
Because, I have always been the nice girl, the good girl, the girl you can trust and rely on. Man, I think I’ve always hated that about myself. I felt the rumblings of stuff down below all the time (and I don’t mean indigestion), and have always worn a society-acceptable face (on occasion I can be quite the dork, but in general, I’d worked hard to not stick out). I never was volatile, though I found myself always angry. I never was unreasonably sad, although I was in such deep grief I could hardly keep it bottled. I never burst with joy, though I wanted it desperately.
Matt began to uncork things (trying for the “full and true”, you know), and after a few months, I began leaking so badly, I was finding that I couldn’t stopper myself when I left class. To me, the streets of New York were awash in anger; everywhere I went all I heard were people fighting. Men and women became one long chain of lonely desperates. I was hypersensitive to being with people, but I also, for the first time in this introvert’s life, could hardly stand being with myself.
My PM2* ‘s self-exposure caught me by surprise. I had grown up in a good family, had (relatively) good experiences, had no reason to feel the victim. But I’ve found every family has its curses, passed down generation to generation; and now I saw a pattern I could trace through grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, my parents and now to me. I loathed myself.
I think I’d always recognized that I was somewhat embarrassed when True-Me would sneak out when I wasn’t paying attention (snort-laughing when you have gas can be pretty devastating). But I don’t think I knew that “Fear and Loathing in New York” was the perfect Heidi-title. I was deep in fear of what would happen if I was myself, and deep in loathing that I wasn’t.
I stopped Matt’s class (along with a number of other things) that I might have control on stopping something in my world. I put down all creative things in my life, covered the mirrors with black cloth, shaved my head, and began to chip away at the fear and lies that had been completely acceptable in my world (but not my art) up to now.
It’s been four years of practicing telling the truth about myself to myself (and now, to other people). I have worked hard to stop all the judgment and manipulation of my image. I actually am beginning to trust my own instincts, and give value to my whims and ideas. I don’t think I recognized this before, but creatively, I used to draw on fear or that which comes out of fear (anger, grief, disgust). Because I had some power out of that, I remember being afraid of what would become of me artistically if I pursued healthiness and truth.
I wondered when it would happen, if it would happen. It happened in January: the draw back to acting, to creatively expressing myself in a professional environment. Coming back to MCS felt like a test to see if my truth-telling held up (because Matt doesn’t let you lie) if my abandoning fear as a driver would send me into a tailspin, grasping for my mask, or if I could be fully vulnerable with strangers, with a loud Italian man yelling, “Again!” I looked around that first class back, and thought, if I can convince myself that these people love me, I will be safe to expose myself in repetition, and be able to focus on the other person, without wanting to hide. But you cannot control if others love you (and it seems criticism is the way of the American public), so that con would be just that: a con. It passed through my head that if I loved my repeating partner–looked into her face and let myself be filled with her humanity, her uniqueness, her best and worst, and loved her — my safety would come from my own love, and I could trust enough to be vulnerable.
I was blown away at what come forth from my little creative love experiment: Allison (bless her) went ballistic and gave so generously to me that first night back repeating. The believing in myself, the working out of what love does to me and the other person (it, too, can get you good and mad and sad and joyful), the trusting myself enough to risk and not judge myself with the result: this saying no to fear… this is new to me, and I am adoring Matt for supporting and encouraging me in what feels like a new art to me now. The stuff that is coming out in me is truer and fuller than it has been since I was a child.
Loud Italian Man, you may now yell, “AGAIN!!”–Heidi Duncan

*PM2 is the nickname of Personal Monologue #2 which is writing/performing a monologue of what stops you…it’s an exercise with a blind spot; what stops you will actually stop you from finishing it..until…

"The Neighborly" Featuring Heidi Duncan Goes to the Soho Film Festival 2010 /  by Heidi Duncan

Written and Directed by Stephen Girouard, starring Heidi Duncan, Stephen Girouard, James Price 

Jake and his wife Heidi, returning home from the grocery store, greet their 'new' neighbor across the hall as he is also arriving home. They feel guilty. He moved in a year ago and they have yet to introduce themselves. Their home cooked dinner plans are held up when Heidi realizes they forgot to get olive oil. Jake bounds across the hall to formerly introduce himself and see about some oil. Neighbor Don is quite offended and proceeds to lecture the bewildered Jake on the subject of being neighborly. You might swear you were watching Don Corleone lecture that funeral director on the subject of respect. What will Jake do? What will this olive oil really cost? And why does this film also remind me of the scene from the Godfather where The Don meets his death in the garden? All these questions and more will be answered.