"parkman" by Kristin Mallery

"Some people are calling me a 'heartist,'" says Mallery, "but hearts happen every day, all around us. You just have to be awake to see them."

Mallery has been keenly aware of the cardioids around us for over five years: she's collected about one hundred and fifty unique images with her digital camera. These images have to be seen -- description doesn't do justice to the scope and novelty of a project this curious, even eccentric, yet oddly inspiring.

The heart is a potent and universal symbol, according to Mallery, who believes there is something innately attractive, and ultimately human, about the way it looks: "The shape of it is imperfect. That's why they're so common. A heart doesn't have to be symmetrical. Perhaps that's the bigger message. There is no perfect love. It's really just people, doing the best they can."

A selection of her cache of hearts is currently on display in her first-ever photo exhibit, which features some amazing photos, such as one picturing two tendril-like tree branches reaching up and curling inward to form an incomplete, but wholly organic, heart. "That's one of my most recent finds," says Mallery, adding that prints of the image are "selling like mad." She discovered the formation in the Arnold Arboretum, just a few blocks from her Roslindale apartment.

"scallion" by Kristin Mallery View more photos

Mallery says one of her earliest found hearts jumped out at her from the middle of the road. "It was a paper bag from Dunkin Donuts that had been driven over about 80 times," the artist says with childish excitement in her voice. "It was crumpled into the shape of a perfect heart. I just happened to have my camera with me."

To the untrained eye that paper bag on the street would register as nothing more than a piece of trash. A nasty and black stain on a white oven would be something to be cleaned. But to Mallery it is art. "A lot of my chef friends love the one on the stove top," says the photographer, "and people laugh when they see the heart in the bagel. Everyone relates to something different."

Some of the incarnations are almost too perfect to believe. When asked if any of the hearts were posed, Mallery stated emphatically, "Absolutely not. That would be no fun!" She acknowledges that one image in particular -- of a long boot shoelace draped into a beautifully symmetrical ticker -- has raised some eyebrows. "But that's exactly the way I found it while I was working at one of my client's houses," explains Mallery. The amateur artist makes her living as a professional clutter consultant, and says she constantly finds beauty in the chaos of every day life.

Still, while Mallery claims, a bit cheekily, that none of her hearts were "set up, altered or injured" in the making of "'Hearts Happen," she admits that her very first found heart was actually man-made. Or more accurately, it was woman-made. "I made it after opening a fresh jar of peanut butter. I remember putting my knife in, scooping up some peanut butter, and I saw I had created a perfect heart. And I took a picture of it."

Many of Mallery's hearts, like the one in the peanut butter, appear in the safety of her home. But heart-spotting can be dangerous work. To capture a large, shapely oil spill Mallery says, "I had to stand in the middle of a busy road, dodging traffic, to take the picture. It was fun!"

Mallery says she likes to take risks, but admits that taking her private passion into a public space has made her a little uncomfortable. She says the attention her hearts are getting, especially around Valentine's Day, is "somewhat overwhelming."

Yet she is branching out. In response to inquiries and increasing demand, Mallery is self-producing a line of greeting cards. One woman asked the "heartist" to design wedding invitations. And Mallery is in the early stages of publishing a coffee table book filled with her artful, yet simple, images. To top it all off, just last week she bought the domain name, "heartshappen.com," from a photographer in Texas. "Things are moving so fast," says Mallery.

In fact, Mallery may have started a movement of coronary foot-soldiers who keep one eye out for the hearts they see around them. "I just got an e-mail from someone saying, 'I just saw a heart,'" the artist says. "People tell me to go to this street or that location, to look behind the computer monitor near the trash or something like that, and I'll find a stone shaped like a heart."

The "Hearts Happen" photo exhibit is on view at the Center Street Cafe in Jamaica Plain, MA, through March 5, 2006. For information, call 617-524-9217.

MORE ARTS HEADLINES

	Curtains for Boston Costume			"So Much, So Fast"
	Anything But Ordinary			Roller Rink on Thin Ice

		Arts Features Films at the Gate Photos See photos of kung-fu movies and former Boston Chinatown movie theater locations. Guerrilla Art See photos of local artist Matthew Hincman's bench-like sculpture. "O" is for Original Local artist "Danny O" portrays whimsical scenes of summer in Boston. Multimedia Singer at 100 An exclusive online special explores the controversial work and life of Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer. Gauguin's Tahiti Paintings Take a multimedia tour of Paul Gauguin's Tahiti paintings, including the famous painting, "Where Are We From." Hawthorne at 200 View a multimedia celebration of Nathaniel Hawthorne's 200th birthday.