I stopped breathing and held it in until the final number had finished…I was holding almost a grand in my hand!!! What!!? Did I just hear you auction man? Starting at what? $500? Dang! Bam at $975. I was ridiculously shocked. No one has ever seen my work and that was the first time I did abstract and used real “professional art tools” supplied by Disability Network and Personal Assistance Options. This is impossible. Impossible.
The night was Wednesday the 17 of June…it was the night of the Celebrity Gala in the box Dow Diamond for the baseball Loons game. Three amazing buffets and an array of beverages, big time business individuals wandered the room and many recognized and laughed when they found someone familial. I’m walking the suited and tailored females and actually ran into three people in the room. My celebrity that I was assigned to, Dave Emmel, totally knew everyone’s name and what profession they were in—I was super impressed and he knew like the crowd and I shook hands with a lot of people as he introduced me to everyone. I was feeling awesome and just had some tender cut roast beef when the attention was drawn to the live auction.
The room was swarmed to the sitting area and it was a buzzing group chatting about the art that was displayed. There were like six items on tables and we were encouraged to explain our piece and people bid at the lowest end and work the way up. Second to last, I was enthusiastic to explain how our piece was a “blind abstract” with our hands on the pen with my right hand and his left hand. The second part of the piece was wrist to wrist union.
The art project was solid with hard contour lines, amazing deep marker colors and a balance on the bottom right. “High Def” was definite the art piece that was the best of my life (sometimes I am nasty and procrastinate and never do the finish job”). There was an entirely awesome turnaround time at about 12 hours. David is a CEO and had a slammed calendar but when we got together, we laughed, and I was pretty much in control for my side in the artistic realm. We were standing and doing the vanna white walk after I gave my 5 minute intro..people were like “ohhh, ahhh, wow”. Not intimidated with attention, Dave and I locked eyes with excitement. We laid out the best and there was nothing to do until there was a verbal battle with the fast slamming voice of the auctioneer.
Heaven rang into my ears. I really did it. Midland knows I am an artist.
On the first day of my job, I walk into a production studio to hand in paperwork. A young gentleman stands up to shake my hand when I walk into the room. "Wow! You are tall." he states. I point to my heels of my shoes. "Wow! You are short." Laughter lights up the room.
Matt Damon
San Francisco Clear Channel Radio
With an electric soul of an artist, Heather Deogracia, has an interesting personality that uses her manic branches of her mind to express her sense of humor, expand the creative hourly illustration addiction and continually read big books about artistic principles, elements and glorious techniques to feed her intellectual capabilities.
“With a splash of color and chemicals in my brain, I have to clean it out once a day or it must flash flood my other organs.”
Heather Deogracia
Proud to start staging a background of her latest achievements, Heather was on the front page Sunday Feature in the Midland Daily News on Oct. 19, 2016 and is an Award-Winning Fine Artist for the state-wide competition Legacy Trust Award Collection for the past three years in a row. She displayed in over 30 exhibits and fundraisers in the tri-city area over the past four years. She has earned a 2017 Leadership of Bay County Achievement Award from Studio 23 and a Midland County Art Letourneau Award for "Collaboration and Creativity in Community Support".
A harshly educated woman, Deogracia spent five years to earn a double major Bachelor’s Degree of Science in Medical Illustration in Pre-Medicine and Fine Art at California State University in San Bernardino. At the same time period, she held down three jobs as an Intern for the District Attorney, Graphics Editor for the college weekly newspaper and created the Peer Health Education program.
Her artistic talents covered in the fine studio art requirements included painting, color theory, graphic design, photography, figure drawing, advanced drawing, watercolor, sculpture, illustration and art portfolio assignments to keep work organized. In the sciences, she has a background in chemistry, organic chemistry, biochemistry, advanced human anatomy and psychology, biology, genetics, comparative animal psychology, marine biology and medical microbiology.
Currently, she has been an art instructor for workshops for the past year for Creative 360, teaching private art lessons and writing a graphic novel soon to complete by the beginning of 2018 named Heather Hurts Inside: Illustrations of a Broken Human. The new true story is about a suicidal bipolar woman that is prescribed Ritalin at the age of 38 and she reverts back to her glory days of her life. The truth is that no one knows the past is killing her mind.
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