Heather Jones

Contemporary Art Matters is proud to present the exhibition Heather Jones: Black Rock and Beyond, on view until August 28, 2020. Jones, an accomplished artist based in South-Western Ohio, was recently an inaugural artist-in-residence at Kehinde Wiley’s Black Rock Senegal.

Her gorgeous sewn abstractions examine the boundaries between the traditional craft of quilting and fine art painting. Her geometric pieces push the formal possibilities of color and design, while investigating conceptual issues involving the socio-political relationships between gender, culture, time and place while questioning what makes a “painting”?

She simultaneously draws inspiration equally from the quilting traditions of her Euro-Appalachian ancestors, and Color Field painters like Ellsworth Kelly. Heather views her abstractions as collage and assemblage; her approach is to arrange cut fabric shapes, refining her compositions before sewing them together.

Jones studied art history at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning, earning both a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts (ABT). Her work has been exhibited widely at national and international venues including the Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, OH (solo); Art on Paper, New York, NY; Aqua Art Miami, Miami, FL; Marta Hewett Gallery, Cincinnati, OH; Iowa Quilt Museum, Winterset, IA; New England Quilt Museum, Lowell, MA; the University of California, Berkley, CA; Boecker Contemporary, Heidelberg, Germany; drj- dr. julius | ap, Berlin, Germany; Five Walls, Melbourne, Australia; and M17 Contemporary Art Center, Kiev, Ukraine. Jones’ first book, Quilt Local: Finding Inspiration in the Everyday was released in October 2015 by STC Craft, an imprint of Abrams, New York.