We recently connected with Stacy Heydt and have shared our conversation below.

Stacy, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I wasn’t born to be an artist. In fact, as a child, I shied away from anything related to “art”. I was afraid of it; not measuring up to anyone’s expectations, especially my dad’s. Dad was an artist by trade and excelled in a variety of mediums all of which I found fascinating, but daunting. We had several artists in our family tree that created beautiful works of art. But me? I was afraid to draw a simple stick figure. I must have learned some basics through osmosis, as color theory came easily to me as did home decorating and design.

It wasn’t until I was in my forties and purchased a small herd of alpacas that I became serious in the fiber arts. Those basics I’d learned as a child, hand embroidery, cross stitch, quilting, sewing, and knitting all of which were done under the scrutiny of my mom who was a purist of the traditional arts and a perfectionist when it came to execution of any handwork.

After our second year of shearing our herd, we had bags and bags of beautiful fiber in many different colors. It was as pleasurable as it was challenging. What did one do with all of this beautiful alpaca fiber? My husband gave me the gift (an ultimatum of sorts) on my birthday. As a gift, he gave me a gift certificate to learn to spin with a master spinner. In jest, he added not to come home until I learned to spin. No pressure, right? I was so nervous that I had trouble with the hand a.k.a. drop spindle and several wheels. My time was running short. I was the only pupil that showed up on that snowy weekend so long ago. I had one day left to learn. My instructor set me at a different wheel and told me to spin this long rope of fiber she called roving into yarn. She didn’t care what it looked like, just make it hold together with some twist. Oh, you mean it didn’t have to be perfect, sure, I can do that. And I did. With my shoulders up past my ears and my feet treadling about 50mph, I created some of the worst yarn I’d ever seen. But I had my ahha moment and got the concept. I went home with that very wheel and began to practice and learned to love the art of spinning yarn.

As I spun, shoulders now relaxed, I reflected on what I’d learned from my dad as a child. He taught me the art of weaving on a small loom. I longed to reconnect to him and those moments on the loom. All I had to relearn was the technical part of warping the loom. The rest came back, like riding a bike, so to say. I loved working with the natural color pallet, but longed from other colors to incorporated into my tapestries and wearable art. I took one dying class at a workshop and I was hooked again. Soon I had a plethora of colors in which to use.

Somehow weaving and knitting did not satisfy my dormant art brain. I began to learn about wet felting my fibers. Simple projects at first which over the years have led to my paper thin wet felted pictures that resemble watercolor paintings by which I am known best for. What? Where did this artistic style come from? My hands could create what my brain could see, but which I could not draw. Crazy, right? I began to add some embellishment ideas like free-hand sketching with my sewing machine to outline and define critical areas. Hand embroidery and beads were added when I thought a piece needed so flair.

This must have awakened the artist within that I never new existed. I craved more. While on a trip to New Mexico, I learned how to use a resist to create felted bowls. Actual 3-D bowls that I could spin in my hands to design openings that resembled the Native American pottery bowls that I admired as a child. As I perfect this art style, I added embellishments that I remembered from the past like feathers, beads and leather. As in pottery, no two are alike in color or shape. Wet felting had now become by most creative use of my alpacas’ fiber.

Suddlenly my life changed from an accident that caused a traumatic brain injury. It took months to retrain my brain in the most basic of tasks. It took years to make my comeback. During my recovery, I was told to keep an art journal to reconnect the synapse in my brain. That’s when my art took a crazy turn. While I still enjoy and create my fiber art pieces, new pathways were created that led me into many different art mediums with the most surprising medium being painting and basic drawing. The natural talent, shall we say, that was suppressed for most of my life had found a way to surface and flourish.

Now, five years and one move later, I work as a part time art teacher for both kids and adults through a local art gallery; a position I never would have even dreamed possible in my youth. Working with kids on a weekly basis, coming up with new art projects in a wide range of mediums has challenged my brain to be more creative, expanded my knowledge and my skills are ever improving. Answering calls for artists, having a solo showing in a small gallery, and celebrating with adults as they learn a new art medium and create something special to them has given me a life full of adventure and satisfaction.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

No matter what medium I’m currently working in, most, if not all, of my artistic inspiration comes from life, specifically nature. There is nothing as perfect, nothing so rooted in math and science, color and design as what is found in nature.

As you’ve just learned, I began my art career when I purchased my herd of alpacas when I was in my forties. Prior to that, I worked in the business/computer world. I also worked the world of advertising and marketing. I found crafting enjoyable. I quit my business career when my youngest was born. Both my husband and I wanted to move to the country, so we purchased a few acres, built a house in a neighborhood where everyone had a small acreage. Then we got into horses. I mean BIG time. We bought several horses, about 25 acres and built our farm for the horses. Our accountant said the farm had to have a purpose, so we investigated livestock that were not raised for food and discovered alpacas. They were perfect for us. Their care was very similar to what I was used to with the horses PLUS, I would have a crop of fleeces every year. Perfect.

At that time, alpacas were a new industry in the United States. I studied not only animal husbandry, but also about fiber. I joined the national alpaca association, Alpaca Breeders Association (different name at the time) and was soon asked to become part of the committee that learned and taught other alpaca owners about the fiber end of the business. It fit so nicely into my advertising and marketing skills and my knowledge of what I’d already gained in working with their fiber. I continued to learn, give seminars and fiber art classes at the national shows, large and small farms around the country. I became the chair of the committee expanding our goals into even more uses for this fiber. I studied the science of alpaca fiber and how to sort to make the best products from each grade of fleece. I became a national judge for the alpaca industry judging the quality of fiber that was turned in a show for me to spin – what the fiber world calls a spin-off judge. I also judged the fiber art entries, the yarn that mills, and hand spinners spun. I wrote many articles for the Alpacas Magazine and even a book on fiber in lay terms which became a best seller at the time. That same year, I wrote a children’s book about how alpacas are cared for, shorn and how artisans turn their fleece into finished products to sell.

After my accident and brain injury, I was unable to continue my duties as chairperson and resigned from the committee. I sold my herd of alpacas. My husband and I sold the farm. We and our horses moved to a small, wooded acreage in the Joplin, Missouri area to be near our youngest son. The horses went to live with him on his 70+ acres. They have since passed on due to old age.

Before our move and during my recovery, I was told to keep an art journal. This not only increased my brain activity and productivity but built new neuro pathways. It just so happened they developed pathways into the field of art. Today I enjoy a myriad of art mediums including clay, watercolor, acrylic, plaster, mixed media, fiber, paper, mosaic and more. While I still specialize in fiber, specifically using my alpaca fiber, I incorporate interesting embellishments which then places my art into the Mixed Media categories.

My art has been critiqued by a panel of fellow artists in Best of Missouri Hands organization and I have earned the title “Juried Artist” indicating that I have achieved the status of excellence in three categories: Fiber, 3-D Mixed Media and 2-D Mixed Media. This, as well as my vast knowledge and experience in alpaca fiber sets me apart in these categories.

Since moving to the Joplin area, I have continued with my first love, teaching. The George A. Spiva Center for the Arts Art Gallery has hired me to teach their weekly afterschool art program for ages 6-12 called Creation Station. Here we use a wide variety art mediums to create a new project they can take home each session. I am also involved in their annual Third Grade Field Trip program to the gallery where area third graders create a take-home project based on art they’ve seen in the gallery. When I teach this, I also include history, geography and science as a basis for their art. In addition to classes for kiddos, I teach adult art classes at Spiva and two other area galleries, Urban Art in Joplin and ArtCentral in Carthage. Sharing my knowledge and skills in such a way as to inspire my student’s creativity, boost their confidence while providing a fun learning environment (no pressure for perfection) brings me so much joy.

Creating new projects for classes and using such a variety of mediums has increased my product diversity. My products have grown from framed felted pictures, wall-hangings, felted bowls/vessels to clay pots and birds to canvases that are painted, plastered or mosaiced to jewelry and wearable art to watercolor pictures and cards. My items have been and are currently in the gallery gift shops in the Joplin area and in Warrensburg.

I think what sets me apart from many artists, is the story behind each piece of work I create. At heart I am a storyteller. I do not create a piece of art, I tell a story through my art. Sometimes the story is easy to recognize, others, as with Pixie the Perky Peacock, her story unfolds in the telling. As my audience is drawn into her story, the piece comes alive. At least that’s what I’ve been told. And I believe that is true from the expressions on their face when they “get” it.

My goal in creating any type of art using any type of medium is to provide each customer with something unique, something that touches their heart. Something makes them think, smile or laugh out loud. In my Through the Garden Gate series, I focus on the gifts of nature that we often take for granted. I want my audience to feel as though they are taking a walk in nature and see something differently, feel at ease and at peace, to rejuvenate their soul or escape the stress of our everyday lives.

I think the art that I’m most proud of, or at least in the most inspired by, is the art I create from my alpacas’ fiber. Unfortunately, it is the least understood medium I work in. But to think of how I cared for and loved each alpaca, then sheared their fleece, then taking a small group of individual fibers and place it exactly where it needed to be to create something that reflects on the environment in which they lived, is awe-inspiring. And to be able to create that piece of art in such as way to make it paper thin, yet strong enough to support embellishments so it’s story can be told in an art form all my own.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My goal, in teaching others, is not only to teach a skill for a project, but to pass down the history, knowledge and skills to a generation that is no longer directly connected to the medium. Using fiber as an example: hundreds of years ago, spinning, weaving, even felting, was a part of daily life. The story I tell as I teach youngsters about fiber and fiber art, is that there were no big box stores where people could buy clothing. Hundreds of years ago in rural areas they made their own clothing by spinning their sheep’s wool. If I’m talking about alpacas, then even today, up in the remote Andes Mountains, there is still no electricity and people spin the llama and alpaca wool on a spindle. They spin as they walk. It’s a part of their culture. Artists did not buy paint from a hobby store, they collected natural items and made their own paint. I want my students to take a walk back into history to learn about their art. But I always add some humor and make it fun. As I said, I’m a storyteller.

My mission in creating my art, is to incorporate some of that history into the art itself, even if the story is the underlying handmade, hand dyed fiber that has been transformed into a picture of a flower, vessel or wearable. My driving force is to tell the story that is begging to be told.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I think the lesson that all of us to unlearn is the false believe that we are not creative and cannot create art. Many of us, including myself, have a negative narrative running in the background that creates insecurity and self-doubt. We see what others have created and judge ourselves as competitors before we have the skill set needed to compete. We tell ourselves that we’ll never be that good, so why should we even try.

That was the mindset I had as a child. I saw what my dad could create and saw his artwork as amazing. I still see it as amazing years after his death. But as a child, I had obviously not gone to the Kansas City Art Institute as he had to learn and develop his natural skills. How could I possibly compare my art with his. And yet I was so afraid of falling short (of course I would as a child), I did even was to try. I avoided art classes in Junior and Senior High. So by the time I thought I wanted to learn more, I was already behind the learning curve. My peers had already learned the basics, so I avoided trying as I thought I could never catch up.

That was the lesson I had to unlearn. And it took me decades to unlearn that and have the courage to move forward, and it happened quite to my surprise. I think in the beginning I was trying too hard to be good. After my injury, my life slowed down and art was only used as a tool to heal. As the mind healed my art took on a life of its own as I only was trying to tell my story. As time moved forward, my story turned and was no longer centered around my injury and recovery, but began to include things that brought me joy. And following that, I’m finding my new voice and discovering talents I never thought I could ever possess. In other words, I quit trying too hard and taking myself so seriously, It became a way to express what I was feeling.

We are all creative in different ways. I had to unlearn the false believe that I “couldn’t” make art. What I want to share is that you don’t have to be a master artist to create art that you enjoy creating and love. You can learn at any age if you step over the threshold of fear, find your inspiration, your drive and ambition and learn what you need to know to create what you want to share with others. With positive reinforcement, anyone can learn to do that.

Contact Info:

• Website: StacyHeydtDesigns.square.site
• Instagram: StacyHeydtDesigns
• Facebook: stacyheydtdesigns
• Linkedin: StacyHeydt
• Other: StacyHeydt/BestofMissouriHands.0rg