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

Alright, Heidi thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

I guess I have always taken risks. But it was not to cause harm but because my intuition told me what to do. I always knew it would be okay. All the risks I take is based on the concept that this is my last life. The day I die will be the day I’m done. My tombstone should say “you can’t say she didn’t try.”

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I often identify myself as a rural-based female artist, working as an abstract painter, public artist, and teaching artist. I stumbled into my work as an artist through the world of architecture, because I loved both art and science, physics and math. However, it took me only a year to realize that my previous training and knowledge was not that of my male counterparts. While I have gone through years of regret not pursuing architecture, it took me time to realize that I treat my art practice more like an architect than as an artist traditionally trained in a fine arts program: I study space and people walking through space.

My artform has developed from drawing and bookarts to painting and metal public sculpture. My rural geographic proximity made me more likely to “figure it out on my own,” rather than utilize community-centered art spaces. I made friends with “metal heads”, mechanics, tailors, and construction workers, in order to flesh out visual ideas. As a result of how I collaborate with folks in simply making an object or implementing an idea, I have been able to naturally merge with public art needs and projects.

While I do not do public art full time, as it is very seasonal in Minnesota and I do not have my own studio to create my ideas, I do often help with community facilitations around design thinking and problem solving. The architecture background proves time and time again to weave me into community projects and initiatives.

As a painter, I work in mostly large scale abstract paintings, that are very much influenced by line, color, and gesture of some of my local mentors, and that of the more traditional abstract painters of the post modern era. I was already over a decade into my painting practice when I came across the work of female abstractionists, Elaine de Kooning & Lee Krasner, that eerily resembled what I was already creating. I was almost brought to tears when I saw their work, feeling a deeper connection to their work than any of the male artists of their time and beyond. I started seeing my work as unapologetic and essential, as I felt that living in a region that did not seem to get abstraction, “wasn’t even watching me anyway”… so why not just do as I please.

That turning point in my painting practice landed just before the pandemic, leaving me with only the desire to create expressive paintings at a time when I should have been working on more online sales and efforts. The more unapologetic I was, the more exciting my art supporters became. While I do not know if that was because everyone was stuck at home and online, or if I was releasing some portion of myself that people could relate to.

As the pandemic was starting to open up, I was approached by some developers to open a fine art gallery. In my many years of working for art institutions, art centers, colleges, and galleries, I knew the odds were against me, but even more so with a pandemic that was leaving our entire industry depleted and uncertain of the future.

Yet, I said yes. I felt that opening a space was the best way to exhibit hope in a public way, bringing people BACK to life. I treated it as a traditional gallery but then slowly added (remember it’s the end of the shut down) events that brought people back to art appreciation, real engagement, and re-acclimation to public spaces. I incorporated traditional and nontraditional art forms, from oil paintings to hip hop, found object art to Biblical texts. And frankly, we had fun, even though it only lasted 18 months. The financial realities of running a space like this was a reminder that art can and will be available in more accessible and affordable ways, especially after a global pandemic.

After the gallery closed, I simplified my mission: to bring the arts to communities, through arts education and special events. I have a traveling art trailer called the Tiny School of Art & Design. With this custom built trailer, I believe I can build community through activities I learned in my higher education art studios, such as life drawing and observational drawing. I built the trailer from scratch in 2019, and added art furniture like custom tables and drawing horses, built with my father and son’s help. I am now bringing the Tiny School of Art & Design to community events, libraries, and after school programs. The type of programs I provide always have an intentional element of community engagement to partner with the art activity.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

I think I read in a book for artists this piece of advice: Get A Bookkeeper.

That is a loaded suggestion even if its rather simple. I had a triggering experience with accountants who didn’t see art, especially if you are first starting the career, as a legit business. It made me want to crawl into a hole and figure it out on my own. That became a horrible self sabotaging habit, and made me unable to ask questions in a realm I was unfamiliar.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I have had support from a variety of folks and in different ways. Here’s a rough list of things people have done for me that was unexpected or unconventional:

1. I got into housesitting when I was a grad student and a single mom. I live in Minnesota and many of the locals travel south in the winter. I would be able to stay at a new home, igniting my imagination, and providing my family with “something new”.
2. I met people in my jobs at various art organizations that left lasting impressions (and vice versa). Keeping up with them in authentic ways, they later became funders of my various projects, sales and events. Being an artist and change maker is a long game. Every opportunity to make contact with someone could mean added support in the future.
3. I have a woman who loves what I do. I break all the rules she wishes she could. Over the years, she would offer to buy food and beer for events, pay for tickets for individuals to attend my workshops, or pay for a DJ at the gallery. We had a mutual respect and understanding that all I had to provide is the cost and she will cover what she wants at that point.
4. I love partnering with non-arts organizations (history museums, medical centers, food industry organizations), because they seem to appreciate my contributions to their usual programming.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.heidijeub.com
• Instagram: heidi.jeub
• Facebook: heidijeubmn
• Linkedin: heidijeubmn
• Other: www.heijeuarts.org (for Tiny School of Art & Design)

Image Credits
by Heidi Jeub