ARTIST SNAPSHOT
The World in Tiny Details
By Heidi Vormer
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y name is Heidi Vormer, and my artist name is Remrov, my last name spelled backwards. I was
diagnosed with classic autism when I was 21 years old. This is quite late because my family and
I—and practically everybody who met me—felt that there was something different about me. I
struggled with every aspect of my life—socializing, making friends, language, communicating, school
work—and I just didn’t understand why. My whole world was inside my own mind. I didn’t know
how to communicate or how to interact with others. I didn’t know how to play games, how to behave
or what to say. I didn’t understand anything of the whole world around me. When I finally received
the autism diagnosis, it was a huge relief for me. Now I finally knew what was going on with me.
Many puzzle pieces fell into place.
My one constant during all these years of not knowing was my love of drawing. Since I was very
little, I have always loved to make drawings. I made drawings of patterns and road maps and fractals.
Drawing helped me to stay calm and to relax. The details of the patterns and the fractals were always
the same. They kept repeating over and over. Drawing them helped me to keep my mind organized.
The whole world has always been an extremely chaotic place for me since there are so many tiny
20 Zoom Autism Through Many Lenses