She creates large scaled quilt-inspired artworks in a light and plant-filled lofty studio, the entrance of which is dedicated to Divisible, a project space gallery run with her husband, University of Dayton Painting Professor and fellow artist Jeffrey Cortland Jones. They have been curating shows of up-and-coming artists at Divisible for a decade.
She is represented by Contemporary Art Matters, Columbus; the George Gallery, Charleston; Moremen Gallery, Louisville; Imlay Gallery, Montclair, NJ; and Slate Contemporary, Oakland, California.
Jones’ ancestors came to Eastern Kentucky in the 1910s, a heritage that finds its way into her work.
“I feel really rooted in Southwest Ohio. I’m like fifth generation Warren County. I like being able to go to bigger cities, but it’s nice to come back home.”
Jones 48, studied Art History at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning. She lives in Springboro on a small farm with her husband, their two high school-aged children, Olivia and Aiden, and three dogs — Zeke, Elliot and Kane.
FOLLOWING HER HEART
“My third year of college, my dad took me on a trip to Greece. I saw the Parthenon and all these things that I had only seen in books. That was a real shift. I had this sort of epiphany that you only live once and I wanted to follow what my heart said. So I changed my major from Pre-Med to Art History.
“I had done a lot of painting and ceramics in high school, but I never liked being in the spotlight or putting myself out there. I had a hard time wrapping my brain around seeing myself as an artist. It was easier and more comfortable to study other people and their art than sort of dig into it myself. It made sense to be an Art History major rather than Studio Art.”
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
LIGHT BULB MOMENT
“I always maintained some sort of practice, whether or not I called myself an artist. I started to get really into textiles when I had my kids. My mom’s Great Aunt had made me a baby quilt when I was born. I think because of her, I always from a young age had an appreciation for quilt making. I collected quilts starting in high school.
“In 2002 Jeff and I drove four hours to go see the Gee’s Bend exhibition when it came to Cleveland. It was one of those light bulb moments, seeing quilts on the wall viewed like paintings, as a higher form of art. The beauty of using what they had and how they were self taught. I was fascinated with the idea that this was something a mother could do in her spare time while she was taking care of the family.
“In my art history brain they had this connection to paintings that were made at the same time — Jasper Johns, Rothko — the color and shape. I saw this connection between those two bodies of work, which was really exciting for me.”
ARTIST AUTHOR
Jones’ children were born eighteen months apart. She decided to teach herself quiltmaking as a way to continue a creative practice at home, one that was non-toxic and safe around her babies.
“Rather than with paint, I had the immediacy of being able to work with textiles while I was taking care of my children. I had a sewing machine on our dining room table and a pile of fabric and just put it away when I was done. When I had a few spare minutes I could do something and see progress.
“I ended up writing a craftbook on quiltmaking in 2015, published with Abrams. The theme behind the book is finding inspiration in the every day, and then abstracting it. It was the world that I was living in. I designed a couple lines of fabric for the manufacturer Robert Kaufman Fabrics. The Quilter’s Guild would send me out to teach all over the country.
“When this book of 40 projects came out, I was very burnt out. It was a massive undertaking. I wanted to get back to painting. I was getting very frustrated because I didn’t like the process and more importantly, I didn’t like the results. Having the benefit of being married to an art professor, he was like, well, why don’t you see if you can figure out how to use fabric as your media? He showed me the work of Jo Fife and other artists who use textiles in a nontraditional way, and that struck a chord with me.
“I was thinking about Josef Albers and color theory. How can I push color? What can I put next to this color to make it pop? What can I put next to it to tone it back down?”
BLACK ROCK
Jones was selected as an artist-in-residence for Kehinde Wiley’s inaugural artist residency class at Black Rock Senegal in 2019. Wiley, who in 2017 was commissioned to paint President Barack Obama’s official portrait, founded the residency.
“The experience was amazing, in terms of seeing my work on a world stage. I don’t have an MFA, I don’t even have a BFA. So there’s always been a lot of self-doubt because I’m like, well, what’s my cred? I got it on my own merit of my work and my proposal without having a foot in the door.
With the doubt and questions that I had about my own work, realizing that these people who I greatly admire saw something in me, told me that maybe I do know what I’m doing.
The great thing about Black Rock is this sense of community that they’ve built. This is now the fifth year into it, and I’m in a show at the Gantt Center in Charlotte as a Black Rock artist. I was invited to Kehinde Wiley’s studio last spring in New York. I feel very fortunate to be a part of this family.”
GET TO WORK
My day begins early. I’m up with my kids. Even though they’re high schoolers we still get up with them. Make coffee, make breakfast for the kids.
I get to the studio around 8:30. Because I really grew my practice after having kids, I’ve been very conscientious about the fact that time is a commodity, and not wasting it. I know the value. I’m not on my phone. I always had a studio at home prior to having one here at Front Street. At home it’s like, well, I can do the dishes. There’s laundry, there’s the pets. When I come here, there are not those distractions.
I turn the lights on, check the plants, and get to work. I might be focusing on a commission or making work for a show.
I put headphones on. Mostly music, some podcasts. I have been listening to a lot of Florence & the Machine lately. I’m in this 90s space. The Cranberries, old school stuff.”
DIVISIBLE TOGETHER
“We have openings at Divisible the first Friday of every month. Jeff does a lot of it but we curate it together. We’ve done some local artists, some national and some international. It’s a nonprofit project space. A lot of time’s it’s people’s first show. We provide a space where artists have the opportunity to experiment in a no-pressure environment. Front Street has been very supportive and we couldn’t do this without a partnership with them.
I started painting again last summer. For First Friday in February I’ll show a sneak peak of some of my paintings at Divisible.”
SCALE IT UP
Jones’ recent work is sized nine by twelve feet. She has figured out a practical way to asses her works-in-progress with the help of an oversized piece of flannel stapled to the studio wall.
“There’s a bit of a collage element in the fact that I’m cutting shapes apart and putting them together in different ways. I’ll make this stack of triangles and then I can stick the pieces to this flannel without pins or glue. I’ll lay out a composition on the wall. It’s great because I can step back and look at it. Once I’m happy with the arrangement of the parts, then I bring them back to the sewing machine and sew them together into the final composition.”
She started working on these large scale unstretched pieces that resemble drop cloths while at the Black Rock residency in Senegal.
“They reference clotheslines that I saw all over Dakar, but also my grandmother had a clothesline, and I would always help her do the laundry and hang them up. So there is that tie to my Eastern Kentucky Appalachian Southwest Ohio relatives.”
HOMESTEADING
I head out around 2:30. We pick the kids up. Even though they’re of age they’re not quite driving yet. When I was growing up and you wanted to be with friends you had to actually go be with them, where now everyone is connected to their phone.
In the afternoons and evenings I’m doing emails from home. I just set up a little studio in the basement, which is great. One of my goals for this year is to consistently maintain a sketchbook practice. Sometimes if people are watching TV I’ll bust out my little watercolor set while we’re watching.
I love to garden. We built a little greenhouse and I always try to get seeds for Jeff’s birthday in February. We have a veggie garden, we always do tomatoes. We have a patch of rhubarb, lots of perennials and native plants, and a barn in the back that I’ve always wanted to convert to a studio.
Balancing it all is crazy sometimes. 2024 was probably the busiest year I’ve had with shows. I had a big show in Cincinnati at the Gallery at The Summit, a boutique hotel. It was 5,000 square feet of gallery space. It was fun because it really allowed me to push scale. I created 9 foot draped pieces that are now at a show at CCAD called “Humming of the Strings.”
Despite her success, Jones knows her priorities.
“I’ve always felt like my kids come first, the studio comes second. I always wanted to be there with them when they’re home. Knowing that time goes by so fast and they won’t always be there, to me it’s more important to be a mom first. This all comes second.”
MORE DETAILS
The group exhibit “Humming of the Strings” will be on view at CCAD’s Beeler Gallery through Jan. 31.
Artist Maximo Armstrong has work on view at Divisible through the end of January 2025, followed by a show of Heather Jones’ paintings in February.
More info at www.heatherjonesstudio.com and on Instagram @heatherjonesstudio.
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