Vicki Heller grew up in Detroit, MI, and became interested in ceramics and painting at an early age, participating in fine arts programs at an international arts camp in Traverse City, MI since age 7. She attended the University of Michigan and graduated with a degree in ceramics and painting in 1982. After moving to Boston, she joined the Radcliffe Pottery Studio [now the Harvard Ceramics Program] where she continues to work.
She exhibited in a number of galleries in Michigan and Chicago, and regularly participated in major art fairs in Detroit and Ann Arbor until she entered medical school. Dr. Heller is an assistant clinical professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology at Harvard Medical School and an assistant gynecologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Prior to medical school, she spent 6 months in Florence, Italy, sculpting and exhibiting a series of works based on Tuscan architecture. She has made series of sculptures focusing on ways that man shapes his environment for utilitarian purposes, including transportation, landscaping and architecture. While at Harvard Medical School she created a variation on a theme of a well-known New Yorker Magazine cover by Saul Steinberg. The graphic satirized the distorted view of the world and NYC by a New Yorker replacing it instead with an equally distorted view of the world by Harvard Medical School. The image was made into a poster, a t-shirt, and was also published as a cover of the Harvard Medical School Alumni Bulletin.
Since medical training, full time practice as an obstetrician-gynecologist, and raising a family, Vicki transitioned to making smaller works including mugs and boxes encompassing imaginary animals and clay whistles.
Dr. Heller has recently retired from private practice to spend more time sculpting.
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