From 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., Diane Heininger is an administrative assistant in the department of Physiological Nursing. But when she's not answering the phone or typing on the computer at UCSF, she can most likely be found with camera or brush in hand, working on her art.

The winner of the viewer's choice award at the student, staff and faculty art show held in April, Heininger works part time at UCSF so that she can devote more time to her favorite medium: "paintagraphs" or hand painted photographs on wood.

An avid traveler, Heininger has long been taking photographs of the places she's visited, especially national parks. As her photos started piling up, she decided to mount them on wood and paint a frame around them to save the cost of buying the real thing. This idea hit a creative nerve -- instead of simply painting a frame, she began extending the scene within the photo onto the wood, adding elements that may have existed outside of the camera's lens. She also uses a pen to outline some of the elements in the photograph to give them a three-dimensional effect.

Heininger has done craft shows in the past but was never in an art show. Since participating in last year's holiday craft fair at UCSF, Heininger has been asked by some colleagues to do paintagraphs of their pets. But for her own artistic fulfillment she likes to create paintagraphs from photos she's taken in places such as New Mexico, Paris, Phoenix and London.

Heininger has been doing paintagraphs for two years but the evolution of the idea has been ongoing since she was a child.

"I had been done things like this with postcards as a kid," she said. "Doing this -- mounting them on wood and kind of building up the edges -- I thought about during Christmas 1995. I had taken some panoramic pictures in Taos Pueblo and I wanted to give them to family members and I wanted to frame them. Somehow this just evolved. Originally I was going to paint a frame around them but once I actually mounted the photograph it seemed a little more interesting and a lot more fun to just extend what was in the image outward."

The series that she showed at the UCSF art show consisted of eleven paintagraphs of Bodie State Historic Park, an old mining town near Mono Lake. The colorful photos featured dilapidated buildings, rooms and a church that were enhanced by Heininger's technique.

"I've always been interested in art -- drawing and painting -- but probably more so recently in photography so this has allowed me to dig out all my old photographs and display them in kind of a different way," Heininger said. "Being in this show inspired me to come up with this particular exhibit. I met a lot of new people and felt a little more part of the University."

by Paula Murphy

1st appeared 5/14/98

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