Jenny Heishman

Jenny Heishman has been living and working as a sculptor in Seattle since completing her MFA at Ohio University in 1999. She was a member of Soil Artist Cooperative from 2000 until 2002. In 2000, she was an emerging artist resident at Atlantic Center for the Arts with Charles Ray and Jennifer Pastor, in Fall 2005 was in residence at Pilchuck School of Glass, and most recently completed a residency at the Vermont Studio Center.

Jenny is the recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Award and Fellowship, a 4Culture Artist Special Projects Grant, and a Pollock-Krasner Grant. She was a finalist for both a Creative Capital Grant in 2004 and the Betty Bowen Award in 2006. She is currently working on a commission for an outdoor permanent work for Ernst Park in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle through Seattle Parks. Her work is represented by Howard House Contemporary (Seattle).

Jenny received 2005 GAP Award funding to defray living expenses while participating in the Emerging Artist in Residence program at the Pilchuck School of Glass. An eight-week stay will allow Heishman the opportunity to experiment with new materials freely and incorporate her glass into a new series of sculptures.

From her past experience working with kids and art, Jenny noticed that they don’t get as much time working and thinking about three-dimensional space as with two-dimensional representation. So as part of her Fellowship’s Meet the Artist requirements, she visited a class of 22 kindergarteners from Peshastin-Dryden Elementary School in eastern Washington. She talked with them about what sculpture is and some of the different ways one can make it. The kids then worked collaboratively to assemble found objects Heishman provided into the shape of a human body. “It was so exciting to see their enthusiasm for the project,” Jenny reported. “Just as any artist would, they took a little time to acquaint themselves with the new objects (their material) and then set to constructing a body. We went from table to table to see each others’ work. It was a real delight to work with such young people, to witness their creativity and the joy they experience from their creations.”