I am an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of textiles and painting. While my practice has been rooted in textiles for the past 15 years, painting has long remained a quiet, persistent presence—often emerging in sketchbooks or works on paper. My palettes are deeply connected to nature and place. Inspired by my travels and daily observations, I use my own photographs as visual anchors—capturing environments both familiar and foreign. These paintings function as abstracted landscapes and memory maps, referencing spaces I’ve seen, inhabited, or passed through. This first series is grounded in my experiences in West Africa, particularly Senegal, during my residency at Black Rock in 2019 and a subsequent return for the Dakar Biennial in 2022. There is a strong dialogue between my paintings and textile work. Grids, repeated shapes, and formal rhythms echo the visual language of American patchwork and quilting. These structures serve as metaphoric and literal maps—referencing migrations, personal and ancestral, while also connecting to my matrilineal heritage rooted in Appalachia, particularly Eastern Kentucky. The act of piecing—whether with fabric or pigment—is both a method of construction and a gesture of remembrance. Improvisation, chance, and play are central to my process. I embrace the looseness and unpredictability that emerges through layering, erasure, and gesture. Light and shadow reverberate. Lines and shapes shift and repeat, invoking movement, rhythm, and breath. Each work is a transparent record of decision-making—a layered articulation of visual language that is at once personal and universal.
Heather Jones (b. Dayton, Ohio) is an interdisciplinary feminist artist whose practice spans textiles and painting. Her work explores themes of place, memory, lineage, labor, and matrilineal connections, often through the visual languages of American quilting and abstraction. Jones received her BA and MA (ABT) in Art History from the University of Cincinnati. She is the author of Quilt Local: Finding Inspiration in the Everyday, published by STC Craft, an imprint of Abrams, New York. In 2025, Jones was appointed Curator and Director of Programs and Engagement at The Contemporary Dayton. Jones has participated in several prestigious residency programs, including Kehinde Wiley’s inaugural artist residency at Black Rock Senegal; Silver Art Projects in New York City; and an intensive residency at Anderson Ranch, Colorado with Mickalene Thomas and Jasmine Wahi. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, with recent exhibitions at the Columbus Museum of Art (Columbus, OH), the Speed Art Museum (Louisville, KY), the Dakar Biennale (Dakar, Senegal), and The Contemporary Dayton (Dayton, OH), where she was featured alongside artists Odili Donald Odita and Jeffrey Gibson. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections, including the Columbus Museum of Art; KMAC Contemporary Art Museum; the Speed Art Museum; Stiftung Konzeptuelle Kunst (Soest, Germany); the Pizzuti Collection; the Chicago Blackhawks; Fidelity Investments; Churchill Asset Management (Seagram Building, NYC); and the Sara and Michelle Vance Waddell Collection. Jones lives on a small farm in Springboro, Ohio, with her husband and two children.