What makes Heather Friedli Tick?

I create art about the natural world while drawing on my family’s native Odawa, Mexican and American heritages. I enjoy the beautiful landscapes of Minnesota and other landscapes around me including the Appalachian trail of which I thru-hiked in 2010. Best known for my contemporary impressionist oil paintings and snow sculpture, drawing on my family heritage and the land in which I live. Bold strokes and brilliant colors light up scenes of cloudscapes, water, and native flora and fauna. Many pieces are created in the context of my wilderness adventures; by directly creating large scale public snow sculptures or by bringing my paints outdoors to create work that shares with the viewer the experience of immersion in the landscape. Within these kinesthetic and contextual works, I explore the spiritual world through the lens of culture and lived experience of place. My work is creative, soulful, bold, and powerful. 

I’ve lived a long life in many places, and in those places I've always created art from the land- be it drawing inspiration from the colors, weaving grass into mats, pinching pots from clay dug from the ground or finding different rocks to paint. I’ve always drawn inspiration from my heritage. Living half my childhood in Los Angeles I was inspired by my Sonoran Mexican heritage; living the other half in Michigan inspired by my Indigenous Odawa heritage by spending time with my elders on our tribal lands.

I’m motivated to create because of a need and longing in my soul. I attempt to synthesize my experience of the natural world for the viewer, the beauty and power of nature. I enjoy going into the physical landscape and experiencing it first hand. I ask “What is important about this land? What did people do that they loved here? What are the plants and animals that live in this space?” I constantly ask “What does my heritage mean to me, what does it mean about the landscape around me and my place in this land?” I bring the power of this into the art of landscape painting. This is the land of my people. I travel and am a part of this land, honoring the ancestors and existing through that lens.

I come from a long line of painters. My great-grandfather John E. Duvernay was a Native American pictorial scene painter for the WPA back in the 1930’s. Many of his works are still held at the tribal offices of the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians in Harbor Springs, MI.  I’m also inspired by the work of my grandfather Jake Friedli who was a painter in Los Angeles creating graphic signs; plus my many creative family members- mom, aunts, cousins, brothers and my sister. I have this incredibly long lineage of artists in my family of which I am proud, and draw on for inspiration. 

Back in college people would tell me the colors I used were too bright. I have worked a long time to arrive at what my color style is today. There is a part of me that is bright- I love bright colors and clothing and color patterns, and I love bright paintings! And that’s ok! I’ve come to accept that part of me, as well as honing in and creating a palette that is unique to myself as well as being beautiful. I love to spread the beauty of how I perceive the world with others, and that’s why I mix colors the way I do.  I love the act of mixing, because mixing oil paint is like mixing butter. So in the morning when I’m mixing my palettes I look at the landscape and interpret how I feel about it through my eyes and actions into those colors.

I love the texture of paint; I enjoy working sculpturally with it. Using thick impasto brushstrokes and thinking about the rhythm and movement of the paint on canvas is part of what inspires me. I'm kinesthetic- I’m a mover and hiker, I’ve always been an outdoors woman. By painting in large format I'm able to create and move with my whole body. 

I enjoy working in large format. It’s a kinesthetic experience- full body painting and snow sculpture. I love to move back and forth in a dance with canvas and snow. I really like large format works because you get incredibly immersed in it and the painting or sculpture becomes a dominant part of the space you are in. 

I’ve been working as a professional snow sculptor for 14 years, winning both the State Snow Sculpting Championship in 2016, and the National Snow Sculpting Championship in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin in 2019 on Team Dino Fight.  Much of my snow art depicts subjects in sweeping motion because of the nature of this kinesthetic art involving my whole body during its creation. Not only does snow sculpting have many physical demands due to the medium,  the physical process of sculpting snow becomes in essence performance art interacting with your audience and team mates.  Through this process, I not only channel my current environment, but also generations of my family’s history.

Processing our past and present through art is a way of healing generational traumas. In the case of my family's indigenous experience, I hope my art can lead to growth and understanding to those who view it. In 2020, I created a snow sculpture with my team of a jingle dress dancer which is a symbol of healing for many in North American Indigenous culture. In 2022 we created a work honoring the plight of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. By creating things from our culture, we’re able to bring that healing and continue to say we are still here. The only way you’re going to heal is to bring people together and bring the truth to light. You can only vanquish the darkness with sunshine. It’s also a great way to have a big public sculpture that is both ephemeral and meaningful to the community.

The act of conscious community building is what made me seriously pursue opening my own art gallery in the midst of the pandemic. During a period of time in 2021 I lovingly refer to as my “spring crazies”.  I became hyper-focused and obsessed with plants, ultimately accruing over 100 different varieties both indoors and out within that time period. While compulsively collecting, I kept asking myself “What’s the deal with these plants? What was going on? Why am I doing this?!” Even though my actions were my own, I knew the answer was bigger than myself.  Whenever I would think about and interact with my plants, the word “Community” and the idea of a healthy ecosystem kept popping into my head.  I kept asking myself “How do I foster Community during a period of social unrest? How can I combat the loneliness the pandemic has brought to our community during this time?” One night in the middle of the night, I woke up and had an answer. I had to create a gallery space for artists as well as the community to organically interact with one another.  A place for artists to not only display and sell their works, but a place to hold classes and community events. I knew in my heart we can’t be isolationists, we’re not going to survive being lone rogue cowboys out here, the only way forward is to work together. AS A COMMUNITY.

The gallery’s motto is “By an Artist, for Artists and our Community.”  Part of Friedli Gallery’s unique structure is to bring back the promise of a gallery’s responsibility to actually get out there and sell the artists’ work. Many galleries these days operate in a “Pay to Play” model, laying the onus on the Artist to do the work of selling their art, (sometimes even hosting their OWN art opening, WHAT?!) and not the gallery.  Because of this, Friedli Gallery is a commission-based gallery with exhibitions and not a vanity boutique charging for wall space. This is a great benefit to artists and for fostering a great collection of shows and exhibitions that push the boundaries of art and creativity.

Friedli Gallery Opened October 2021 to great acclaim and excitement of those in the community.  We’ve hosted many wildly successful shows including our Community Showcase, “We Are Still Here” Indigenous Art Show, and the Friedli Gallery “Book Arts Exhibition”.  These events have had packed wall to wall, shoulder to shoulder openings and great press, really showing how important arts and culture are to our community here in the Twin Cities.