Justin Heller, Hoboken
Member Since January 2012
Artist Statement I am a native of the New York metropolitan area and a resident of Hoboken, NJ. I was a classically trained flutist during my childhood and I participated in New York State School Music Association’s (NYSSMA) bands. In college I taught myself electric bass (not many rock bands were recruiting flutists).
I am colorblind artist who has participated in numerous competitions and galleries. I am a graduate of New York University’s prestigious and innovative Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) within Tisch School of the Arts. ITP is a two-year graduate program located in the Tisch School of the Arts whose mission is to explore the imaginative use of communications technologies — how they might augment, improve, and bring delight and art into people's lives. Perhaps the best way to describe ITP is as a Center for the Recently Possible.
I have always been fascinated with color and the emotional effect color has on people’s moods and attitudes. The foundation of my fascination comes from the fact that I am profoundly colorblind and have a rare form of color blindness (called deuteranopia.)
Deuteranopia is a color vision deficiency moderately affecting the red-green hue discrimination in 1% of all males. It is a hereditary and sex-linked form of dichromatism in which there are only two cone pigments present. I have a particular form of deutranopia called dichromacy in which one of the three basic color mechanisms is absent or not functioning. Dichromacy occurs when one of the cone pigments is missing and color is reduced to two dimensions. While I can see color, they are very different than what a person with normal color vision sees.
Throughout my life people have asked me to describe what it is like to be colorblind. I have no logical answer. Color invokes emotions and memory is often linked to color. It is this aspect that drives that nature of my artwork and approach.
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