Heather Bause Rubinstein, an artist who divides her studio time between New York, Northern Pennsylvania and Houston, Texas. Bause Rubinstein creates paintings on found materials, as well as hybrid constructions of her own paintings synthesized with a variety of reclaimed domestic textiles. Dramatically interweaving gestural abstraction with sewn fabrics, these paintings draw on a diverse range of influences, from the densely-patterned interiors of Édouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard to classic abstractions of Joan Mitchell and Cy Twombly, and deconstructive 1970s painters such as Alan Shields and Claude Viallat. As has been her practice for several years, the artist sources her materials exclusively from thrift stores: utilizing bed sheets, duvets, linens, drapes, crochets, cheap designer scarves, women’s business jackets, and other unidentifiable discards, often redolent of the 1970s and 1980s, the period of the artist’s childhood
Heather Bause Rubinstein (b. 1975 Englewood, New Jersey) studied painting at the School of Visual Arts, New York and received her BFA and MFA in Painting from the University of Houston, Texas. She has held recent teaching positions at Houston Community College, Texas; Sam Houston State University, Texas; and New York City College of Technology, CUNY, Brooklyn. In 2018, her work was included in the group exhibitions Midas Touch in Houston, Texas and Under Erasure at Pierogi Gallery, New York. In 2017, she collaborated with her husband, critical studies professor at UH, Raphael Rubinstein, to bring the pages of his book The Miraculous into the realm of public art with an installation of large text posters spread across the University of Houston campus. Later this Spring, Heather will move her NY studio into the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studio Program.