Fascinators is a series of portraits in which the sitters are wearing Möbius strips and other mathematical or paradoxical figures as hats. These forms could only be worn and held convincingly in the two-dimensional world of the print, though the surrealism is not immediately apparent.

Combinations of woodcut, drypoint on copper, and hand painting, the flatness of the figures contrasts with the dimensionality of their headpieces and a narrative begins to open up between the adorned female figures and the Möbius – a physical manifestation of abstract or invisible concerns. Themes that arise include recurrent and paradoxical thinking, the age of reason, communication, femininity, and the choices we make that define identity and our own realities.

Ellen Heck has degrees in printmaking and painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and in philosophy from Brown University. She is currently living and working as a fine art printmaker in California. She has work in many notable collections including the V & A, Dartmouth University Library and The Cleveland Museum of Art, USA.

Ellen’s work was selected to be shown during International Print Biennale 2014, during which she won 2 prizes – the Northern Print International Residency Prize and the V&A Print Prize, which gave the artist the opportunity to have their winning print/s included in the V&A's collection and featured on the V&A's website with text about the work by Gill Saunders, Senior Curator (Prints)