We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Deanne Gertner. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Deanne below.

Deanne, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

Three projects come to mind.

1. An essay manuscript called Failure Cascade: Essays on Estrangement. This project took me about 6 years (and my whole life) to write. It was incredibly demanding from an emotional perspective. I credit my good friend and poet, Emily Vizzo, for encouraging me to pursue a book-length project. I hope it finds an editor soon.

Here’s more about it: Failure Cascade explains the fragmented, recursive and ever-shifting experience of parental estrangement. These essays grapple with familial obligation versus autonomy. They ask what a daughter owes, if anything, to a complicated, incapacitated father after he suffers a massive stroke. Written with equal parts vulnerability and humor, these essays range in topic from Elton John to Grey Gardens, Picasso to pigs. They document a lifetime of minor and major infractions that led to the final estrangement and its aftermath.

2. I will have my first solo gallery show at SP_CE 13 called Dirty Laundry, which opens Saturday, April 11, 2026, 6-10 pm. This is another multi-year project begun in 2018. My medium is men’s underwear with embroidered or beaded phrases of things men said to me on them.

Each of the pieces tells a short story. Who said it and either where it occurred, if in person, or through which mode of communication. The text on the underwear coupled with the full titles paints a fuller and sometimes more complicated picture. This work is comedic and devastating. Infuriating and entertaining. It toggles between one uneasy feeling and another and back again, which is why it’s kept going for so long.

With the unveiling of the Epstein files, this work feels more urgent.

Because words matter. They shape our reality of the world, each other and ourselves. As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said, “The limits of my language means the limits of my world.”

3. Here Comes Rusty, a public sculpture in Commerce City’s Greyhound Park. This was part of the city’s Urban Renewal Authority’s 1% for art program and is a symbol of Commerce City’s past and future. Castle Searcy and I managed the public art process, including the selection of Los Supersonicos (Carlos Frésquez and Frank Zamora) as the winning artist team. The piece won Best New Public Art from the Westword in 2023.

This site-specific sculpture pays homage to Rusty the Rabbit, the mechanical lure at Mile High Greyhound Park. The phrase, “Here comes Rusty,” kicked off every race run at Mile High Greyhound Park for almost six decades. Yet despite coming in first place every time, Rusty never earned recognition. This long-overdue sculpture finally acknowledges Rusty as the true winner he was. A parody of the iconic Rocky sculpture in Philadelphia, Rusty raises his arms high in victory.

Deanne, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m one of those multi-hyphenate creatives. I’m a writer of all things, a reluctant artist, an art advisor, and content strategist.

My personal work combines autobiography, feminism and text as well as craft forms traditionally coded as feminine (like sewing). I typically explore topics related to familial and romantic relationships, absurdity, comedy and sorrow. I love art that makes you feel many—often contradictory—things all at once, so I try to do the same with my work.

On the business side, I work for Heinrich, a local creative agency, providing content solutions for healthcare, financial services, governments, and tech hardware. As AI makes more and more slop, I’ve focused on maintaining the human side of content and creating things that AI can’t because they’re only in someone’s head.

On the side, I run Hey Hue, an experimental arts agency focused on public art with my long-time collaborator and friend, Castle Searcy. We’ve done public art projects for the Downtown Denver Business Improvement District, Civic Center Conservancy, and Delwest among others. We’re working on a special project for the State’s 150th anniversary which we hope to unveil December 2026.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

One of my agency coworkers has a sign that reads, “Everything is figureoutable.” Without knowing this phrase until a year or so ago, I’ve been living it.

I know that eventually things will change because that is the nature of life. No matter how difficult something seems, chances are you know someone who can help. It’s impossible to know everything about art, writing, public art and marketing, especially when so much is changing so quickly. Being comfortable with being uncomfortable is the hardest and most important thing I’ve learned about resilience and it’s something I keep having to relearn.

A good example of this is getting unexpectedly fired from a job I thought would be my forever-career. It was shocking but also valuable. I learned I had put way too much emphasis on work and had lost part of myself in the process. It was a good reset to re-evaluate what I wanted to do. And it’s how I came up with Hey Hue.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

I love listening to Pivot, a podcast with tech journalist, Kara Swisher, and professor, entrepreneur and investor, Scott Galloway. I’ve learned a lot about strategy from them. Here are a few nuggets: “It’s more important to be effective than right;” “It’s the things you don’t see coming that get you;” and “People who’ve never felt unsafe shouldn’t be designing our world.”

While I don’t 100% agree with everything they say, they always give me something new to think about and learn. They are also the most effective arguers I’ve ever experienced. They can challenge each other without being disrespectful and agree to disagree with humor. They repair when needed and push each other to do better and think harder. They’ve helped me see there are good kinds of conflict and friction in the world and that we need more of both, not less.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.heyhueart.com/ https://www.deannegertner.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deannegertner/ https://www.instagram.com/heyhueart/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deanne-gertner-47060b12

Image Credits

Underwear: Wes Magyar, WM Artist Services

All others: Conor Kind, Third Dune Productions