Artist Spotlight: Karen Heyl

The Cincinnati location of Pendleton Art Center boasts over 100,000 square feet and over 200 artists of every medium imaginable. Each week, we will introduce you to the artists of Pendleton Art Center (PAC). As we work our way through the colorful list of characters, we will feature long-time residents as well as artists who have just joined the PAC Artist Family.

As we launch our new website, we have chosen to shine the spotlight on Karen Heyl, Pendleton Art Center’s very first tenant in 1991.

ABOUT KAREN HEYL, Studio 101

Karen’s studio is the first one guests encounter when visiting Pendleton Art Center (PAC), which makes sense, since she was the first artist to rent a studio when Pendleton Art Center opened in 1985. Karen works in stone sculpture and ceramics. Here is a little about Karen in her own words:

“My earliest memory of wanting to be an artist happened when I was five years old and my kindergarten teacher held up my drawing as an example for the rest of the class to follow. As I grew up, making art was always an important part of my life and I began as an acrylic/watercolor painter, but was introduced to stone sculpture in 1979 while attending the Art Academy of Cincinnati and found it to be the medium for which I was best suited.

A native of Cincinnati, my studio is located at the Pendleton Art Center in the Over-the-Rhine area in Cincinnati. Bas-relief sculpture carved in Indiana limestone is the work for which I am best known. Indiana limestone is found on buildings throughout Cincinnati and Ohio and therefore fits in with original architectural designs.
Using chisels and a pneumatic hammer I employ Old World stone carving techniques and combine simplified, figurative, sensual forms with a variety of textural surfaces to create contemporary design and form.

Nature related subject matter is a motif that has inspired my bas-relief work for many years. Nature represents the flow of life. Often narrative, I strive to have my artwork make a physical, visual, or emotional connection with the viewer.”

Check out Karen’s work at karenheyl.com and be sure to stop in for a visit on Final Fridays, it’s hard to miss her first floor studio. It’s straight ahead as you enter the Pendleton Art Center.