Julie Heller

Born in NYC in 1958, I live and work in St. Louis, Missouri, US. My collage work indulges an OCD brain glitch wherein eyes appear to me in, on, or instead of objects and images I see which do not, in fact, portray or contain them.

For example, a portrait of a man behind his desk appears to me as a closeup shot of an eye, and then I have to strain to see the other (actual) content (in this example, the man behind a desk).

My collages are the products of an exorcising/therapeutic process I've worked out which makes the whole OCD-seeing-eyes-where-they-aren't-thing less bothersome for me. Once frightening (as a mental health issue), it now lives for me as simply "part of my process".

The imagined "eye" will only go away & leave me alone IF I give it a moment's full attention: With eyes relaxed, if I focus on this insistent imaginary eye, the rest of the imagined person's face appears complete as a visual overlay. When I mentally "acknowledge" this face, I have the sense that I've taken its snapshot, and it goes away for the time being, leaving what's actually there (dude behind desk), so I can move on. When I find myself haunted by the face I've imagined, I can render it (via collage) and have it go away.