Andrea Joyce Heimer

Andrea Joyce Heimer
1:00 a.m.: Montana is deep in the throes of a frigid, iced-up winter. The wind chill drives the temperature down even more and sends snow ghosts over the highway that runs past and through town, where there are always a few cars, even on a night like this. The cars hurtle through darkness toward the lights of Great Falls, cutting through miles and miles and miles of plains that sit like an open palm. The drivers’ eyes stay fixed on the icy road ahead, entirely missing the turnoff that leads to the makeout spot by the duck pond. It is mostly only teenagers who know this turnof. They go there to fog up the windows and turn their cars to sweaty ovens, making the winter wind outside seem extra cruel., 2022
Acrylic & oil pastel on panel 
40 x 30 in
101.6 x 76.2 cm
(AJO22.001)

Andrea Joyce Heimer
2:00 a.m.: At this time of night, on the edge of Great Falls, the only people awake are highway drivers, drunks, and poachers., 2022
Acrylic & oil pastel on panel 
40 x 30 in
101.6 x 76.2 cm
(AJO22.002)

Andrea Joyce Heimer
3:00 a.m.: At three a.m. a drunk, muscled blonde boy knocks on the window of my sleeping sister. He is in love with her and makes it known in the way he has hopped a fence and stumbled through trash bags. She is used to this and dreams only of luxury and cake, at least that’s what I imagine., 2022
Acrylic & oil pastel on panel 
40 x 30 in
101.6 x 76.2 cm
(AJO22.003)

Andrea Joyce Heimer
4:00 a.m.: In the wee hours of this December morning, the day I will lose my virginity, or rather have it taken, I dream of my boyfriend and other strange, unpredictable creatures. Outside there is falling snow and barking dogs., 2022
Acrylic & oil pastel on panel 
40 x 30 in
101.6 x 76.2 cm
(AJO22.004)

Andrea Joyce Heimer
5:00 a.m.: My parents twitch, talk, and shudder in their sleep. I wonder what dream monsters poke and prod them into restlessness. It’s five a.m. now. In another hour they will wake up and be upset by my boyfriend’s graffiti – an irresponsible love note that will turn out to be one of the nicest gestures he ever makes., 2022
Acrylic & oil pastel on panel 
40 x 30 in
101.6 x 76.2 cm
(AJO22.005)

Andrea Joyce Heimer
6:00 a.m.: It is 6:00 a.m. and I, twisting around in the space between dreams and wakefullness, imagine how sex will make me feel, when and if I ever have it. I picture my fifteen year old body, awash in orgasms – strong, striking, and glowing from the light of a hundred meteors. I picture feeling the best I’ve ever felt. I picture being at one with nature. I picture fish jumping out of their streams just to get a peek at me., 2022
Acrylic & oil pastel on panel 
40 x 30 in
101.6 x 76.2 cm
(AJO22.006)

Andrea Joyce Heimer
7:00 a.m.: Inexplicably, I wake up depressed. I am late for school. It is cold but a warm purple wind tussles my ponytail and I know this means a chinook will melt away some of the snow this afternoon. Two idiots pummel each other with snowballs while they still can., 2022
Acrylic & oil pastel on panel 
40 x 30 in
101.6 x 76.2 cm
(AJO22.007)

Andrea Joyce Heimer
8:00 a.m.: In Montana the warm chinook winds appear without warning and skitter along the ground as quick as spiders, unfreezing tree trunks, hills, highways, the plains. The chinook warms indiscriminately, thawing roads, ice, poachers, and hunters alike., 2022
Acrylic & oil pastel on panel 
40 x 30 in
101.6 x 76.2 cm
(AJO22.008)

Andrea Joyce Heimer
9:00 a.m.: I am fifteen and my high school is a small but treacherous battleground full of bullies and finks. Each day I think about the horses and cows in the pastures beyond, and how they eat and run all day. On this morning I follow my boyfriend to a tree that he begins to destroy as a token of his affection. I know before it happens that he will only carve my initials because he is not sure how to spell my name., 2022
Acrylic & oil pastel on panel 
40 x 30 in
101.6 x 76.2 cm
(AJO22.009)

Andrea Joyce Heimer
10:00 a.m.: On this December morning I think of any life but my own. Mostly I think about the lives adjacent to mine. I think about my cowboy cousins whose lives, I imagine, are seasoned with prairie dirt and horse sweat. It is very romantic to me., 2022
Acrylic & oil pastel on panel 
40 x 30 in
101.6 x 76.2 cm
(AJO22.010)

Andrea Joyce Heimer
11:00 a.m.: My high school boyfriend, the strange, unpredictable creature that I sometimes dream about, lives near a Flying J truck stop where long haul truckers stop for hamburgers and beer. On this winter day, made unseasonably warm by the purple chinook winds that departed as quickly as they’d arrived, a trio of truckers pauses shoulder to shoulder to watch a cluster of trick jets in the sky. I watch them watch the Blue Angels loop and dive in tidy formations., 2022
Acrylic & oil pastel on panel 
40 x 30 in
101.6 x 76.2 cm
(AJO22.011)

Andrea Joyce Heimer
12:00 p.m.: During the peak of the chinook my boyfriend and I cut school to make out in his grandmother’s cement basement, in the house near the truck stop. She is infirm and can’t make it down the stairs. My boyfriend wants to have sex, which would make this my first time, and I say no and yes back and forth because I am afraid of getting pregnant but I also want my boyfriend to love me forever. He decides for me and I yelp at the surprise of it all. I guess now I am a woman., 2022
Acrylic & oil pastel on panel 
40 x 30 in
101.6 x 76.2 cm
(AJO22.012)

Andrea Joyce Heimer
1:00 p.m: After I lose my virginity I think of the inconceivable numbers of women who have been as surprised and disappointed as I now am. I feel part of history., 2022
Acrylic & oil pastel on panel
40 x 30 in
101.6 x 76.2 cm
(AJO22.013)

Andrea Joyce Heimer
2:00 p.m.: In a small town everyone knows everything about everybody., 2022
Acrylic & oil pastel on panel
40 x 30 in
101.6 x 76.2 cm
(AJO22.014)

Andrea Joyce Heimer
3:00 p.m.: I tiptoe through the rumor mill., 2022
Acrylic & oil pastel on panel
40 x 30 in
101.6 x 76.2 cm
(AJO22.015)

Andrea Joyce Heimer
4:00 p.m.: The late afternoon sky turns blue as lips and the temperature plummets yet again. Teenage sex has made me feral and raw feeling. I skulk to the cemetery to ask the ghosts if I am going to hell now, if I have an STD, or if I am now pregnant with quadruplets. Ghosts are experts on all things, is my thinking., 2022
Acrylic & oil pastel on panel
40 x 30 in
101.6 x 76.2 cm
(AJO22.016)

Andrea Joyce Heimer
5:00 p.m.: I walk through the neighborhood and through the empty lots past it. I walk on a path through trees and old bird’s nests. I walk toward a cave., 2022
Acrylic & oil pastel on panel
40 x 30 in
101.6 x 76.2 cm
(AJO22.017)

Andrea Joyce Heimer
6:00 p.m.: Post-sex anxiety monsters play in rivers of my blood., 2022
Acrylic & oil pastel on panel
40 x 30 in
101.6 x 76.2 cm
(AJO22.018)

Andrea Joyce Heimer
7:00 p.m.: At seven p.m. on this December evening I make some phone calls and sex gossip travels to the warm interiors of my inner and outer circles. Outside is once again frozen, cold cold cold. As B. and I quip through the phone lines a chorus of coyotes yip in the distance., 2022
Acrylic & oil pastel on panel
40 x 30 in
101.6 x 76.2 cm
(AJO22.019)

Andrea Joyce Heimer
8:00 p.m.: My girlfriends talk on the phone for ages. They talk about me, my boyfriend, sex, and school. On the phone lines our families disappear and it is just us and our voices and the cold night air slipping in through cracked windows in our bedrooms. We are free.., 2022
Acrylic & oil pastel on panel
40 x 30 in
101.6 x 76.2 cm
(AJO22.020)

Andrea Joyce Heimer
9:00 p.m.: By nine p.m. that night I have described my first sexual experience over the phone at least five times. With each telling the scenario unfolds more tenderfly than the last and by the time I describe it to H. the story is complete fiction. At the other end of the line, at H.’s house, I hear her family’s dogs barking. The coyotes have fallen silent. Just a dumb beagle and some kind of hound. I think H.’s sister is listening in on our conversation., 2022
Acrylic & oil pastel on panel
40 x 30 in
101.6 x 76.2 cm
(AJO22.021)

Andrea Joyce Heimer
10:00 p.m.: There is a field outside town a few miles down a dirt road that is surrounded by more empty fields and some old cars and tumbleweeds. Great Falls high schoolers and early twenties burnouts go there to drink and barf. When the wind is just right I can smell their bonfires from my bedroom window., 2022
Acrylic & oil pastel on panel
40 x 30 in
101.6 x 76.2 cm
(AJO22.022)

Andrea Joyce Heimer
11:00 p.m.: My very very very good friend makes a snowy pilgrimage to my house this night to hear about the loss of my virginity first hand. Because I am looking in her eyes she gets the real version, not the flowery phone one. “Oh,” she says. “I see.” It was maybe not this night but certainly another, my high school boyfriend broke into my sister’s car and stole her stereo and a necklace right after I loaned him twenty bucks. This is not the true love I had in mind., 2022
Acrylic & oil pastel on panel
40 x 30 in
101.6 x 76.2 cm
(AJO22.023)

Andrea Joyce Heimer
12:00 a.m.: Montana is still deep in the throes of a frigid, iced-up winter and the wind sends more snow ghosts over the highway that runs past and through town, where there are always a few cars, even on a night like this. The cars hurtle through darkness away from the lights of Great Falls, cutting through miles and miles and miles of plains that sit like an open palm. I think of the cattle out there in the dark, with nothing between them and the night but a thin fence. Danger surrounds them, making the winter wind seem extra cruel. A new day begins., 2022
Acrylic & oil pastel on panel
40 x 30 in
101.6 x 76.2 cm
(AJO22.024)