Past Exhibition

Heidi Preuss Grew: Into the Wilderness

April 12 – May 11, 2014

Atrium Gallery

Associate Professor Heidi Preuss Grew is a Salem Oregon artist whose ceramic work recently earned her first prize in the Eleventh International Biennial of Artistic Ceramics in Aveiro, Portugal. An exhibition of her recent works will be featured at Willamette University’s Hallie Ford Museum of Art in the Atrium Gallery, April 12 through May 11.

Preuss Grew says, “I seek to reveal the vulnerable and pathetic side of the human condition as well as the heroic and beautiful. My studio practice involves serious and playful endeavors as I meld animal and human features together to develop specific meaning, symbolism, and psychological impact. This combination allows greater freedom in the creative process as it straddles real and fictional worlds.”

Willamette University Art Historian Professor Ricardo De Mambro Santos says Preuss Grew’s creatures “exercise a long-lasting effect over audiences through their capacity of awakening, disclosing and further stimulating a sense of wonder, amazement and even fear.”

An opening reception will be held April 11 from 5-8 p.m. at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art. On April 15 Preuss Grew will present a Tuesday Gallery Talk at 12:30 that is free and open to the public.

Preuss Grew has taught studio art at Willamette University since the Fall of 1999. She earned a BA degree and two BFA degrees from the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, where she studied German, art history and crafts and earned an MFA degree from Ohio University in ceramics.

Over the years, she has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States, Europe and Asia and is included in public and private collections in the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, Denmark, China and Japan, as well as the Hallie Ford Museum of Art.

Artist Interview
Eric Wuest with KMUZ radio met with Heidi Preuss Grew to explore her exhibition for the April 11, 2014 broadcast of Talking About Art .
Listen to the interview

Financial Support
Financial support for this exhibition has been provided by general operating support grants from the City of Salem’s Transient Occupancy Tax funds and the Oregon Arts Commission.

EXHIBITION RELATED PUBLICATIONS:

Marvelous Monsters: Recent Works by Heidi Preuss Grew
Essay by Ricardo de Mambro Santos
© 2010 Hallie Ford Museum of Art
ISBN: 9781930957626
Paperback
Available at the museum's store.
$9.95

ARTICLE

Marvelous Monsters: Heidi Preuss Grew's Recent Works
Article by Ricardo De Mambro Santos
Issue 93 (December 2013) of Ceramic Art and Perception.