UPCOMING – Heather Leier: Practice Pinny
February 6, 2026 – April 30, 2026
Exhibition Details
Opening Reception: February 5, 2026 5:00 - 8:00pm (remarks at 6:00pm)
Exhibition Dates February 6 - April 30, 2026.
As a printmaker, Heather Leier is deeply attuned to embodied knowledge—the physical instincts and repeated actions that shape studio practice. The way one braces to pull a print, the gestures and tools involved, and the rituals that accompany the process all accumulate through repetition. Her practice pinny becomes a metaphor for this “costume of preparation,” echoing the apron worn in the print studio.
Repetition runs through the quilt-like prints, textile patterns, patchwork squares, and soft sculptures. It becomes a soothing, regulating practice—one that builds habits and coping mechanisms to support the body and emotions amid daily anxieties. These anxieties stem from ordinary experiences as well as the dissonance between what is presented and what is real. The quilt motif introduces a female-centered practice that repurposes scraps and waste materials into objects of use, honouring histories of feminine and often invisible labour while centering and signifying care.
Humour and play also recur throughout the work, underscoring their essential role in the rhythms of daily practice. Leier highlights the masked and performative nature of institutional care through a printed pickleball court installed at the gallery’s center. The piece complicates the space, pointing to the absurdity of corporate wellness initiatives while still inviting play.
Across this body of work, Leier exposes and elevates both labour and creative practice, emphasizing their value while cautioning against their commodification. Interwoven throughout are themes of care—care for the body, for artistic labour, for coping amid everyday forms of violence, and for navigating institutional structures.
Heather Leier is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Calgary in Treaty 7 region in southern Alberta, Canada. Through her art practice, she employs research-creation approaches to examine embodied trauma and problematize shared assumptions of socially constructed life-phases and identities. This work ranges from the production of printed ephemera to life-size site-specific print installations all of which draw attention to negotiations of space and endurance with violence. Leier has exhibited her work widely both nationally and internationally including exhibitions in Spain, China, USA, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Russia, Japan, Poland, Egypt, Mexico, and Taiwan. Leier has curated a number of contemporary art projects and was the 2020 recipient of the University of Calgary Sustainability Teaching Award. When she isn’t teaching or working on various print projects, she is likely tending to her plant cohabitants. Leier is a white settler and her pronouns are she/her.
Curated by Michele Hardy and Jenelle Pasiechnik
An illustrated catalogue with a critical essay by Tracy Wormsbecker will be available February 2026.
After working as a community health researcher, Tracy Wormsbecker discovered her love of print almost by chance at the University of Calgary. Completing a BFA in 2012, she has worked with Alberta Print for over a decade, serving as the Executive Director since 2018.
