Andrea Joyce Heimer In The Cloud Nine Apartments, We Each Live Alone. We Look For Ourselves In Every Reflective Surface. We Hear Each Other Through The Walls, 2024

In The Cloud Nine Apartments, We Each Live Alone. We Look For Ourselves In Every Reflective Surface. We Hear Each Other Through The Walls is an acrylic and pencil painting on wood panel.

The painting is divided into seven quadrants of interior scenes and one lower section that contains a fountain, hose, and bicycle on a lawn. In each interior scene, there is a different character who examines him or herself in a mirror or water surface. Divided by thin walls, they are depicted as having physical proximity although their focus is completely drawn inwards. Many of the figures are depicted in bathrooms adding more intimacy and vulnerability to the scenes.

The title of this painting is a direct reference to the apartment complex across from Heimer’s grandmother’s apartment in a small city in Montana. Heimer’s grandmother lived in happy isolation in a small hut in the mountains of Montana for many years until she was too old to live independently and moved closer to her children and grandchildren in the city. Heimer was surprised to find that her grandmother seemed so much lonelier surrounded by people than when she was completely by herself in nature. The Cloud Nine Apartments were a ser of houses across the road that became a sort of soap-opera and source of entertainment for Heimer’s grandmother. Mostly populated by young single people, the Cloud Nine inhabitants became the source of stories Heimer and her grandmother would fabulate. Looking back, the artist is struck by the fact that everyone lived in such close quarters and yet didn’t know one another. With her painting she both portrays that disconnect and alienation as well as expresses a hope that there might be a way to bring people out of their solipsism and towards one another.