Heather Fortin Rubald is a Colorado native who spent the first 20 years of her career in professional theater, which exercised all sorts of her creative facets. Visual Arts and making things with her hands was also an ongoing pastime. From a very early age she enjoyed making things out of random nothings and loved seeing the potential in used up, neglected and discarded things. Born of a father who could not throw away any scrap of building material and a mother whose mantra was “you know how easy that would be to make?”, Heather was always encouraged to collect and experiment and create.
The medium of single-use plastics—particularly bags—inserted itself into Heather’s life in 2007 or 8 as just another playful creative experiment. It quickly became the focus of most of her creative energies and was also the beginning of the realization that this medium, in the right hands, had something important to say about our cavalier reliance on single-use plastics and the dark impact they make on our planet. Though she had never been an activist before, Heather began the endeavor of using this medium to create beauty that captures people’s attention and directs their thoughts to their place in the ecosystem and their responsibility to their environment.
Arts Administration is Heather’s newest passion. Understanding that through art a message may be sent to a broader audience in an impactful way has led to a deep enthusiasm to put more work—thoughtful work—out into the world, and to organize, mentor, encourage, manage, and sometimes even wrangle the wonderful creatives that are making it.
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