Heather Beardsley is an American visual artist that creates mixed-media projects at the intersection of art, science, and environmental issues. She works primarily with embroidery, cyanotype, and air-dry clay, mixing the aesthetics of scientific illustration with craft and children’s art materials to play with display conventions and visual hierarchies. Beardsley received her MFA in fiber and material studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015, and her BA in studio art from the University of Virginia in 2009. After completing her master’s, she spent a year in Vienna, Austria on a Fulbright Scholarship for Installation Art, and in 2017, she was awarded a year-long Braunschweig Projects International Artist Fellowship by the Ministry of Science and Culture for Lower Saxony, Germany. Through a series of international residencies, travel has become an important aspect of Beardsley’s art; she incorporates elements from cities she’s visited to into her projects. Some of her residencies include KulturKontakt Austria in Vienna; Shangyuan Art Museum in Beijing, China; IZOLYATSIA in Kyiv, Ukraine; Rogers Art Loft in Las Vegas; Sirius Arts Centre in Ireland; and La Box in Bourges, France.  Beardsley has shown her work both nationally and internationally, including group exhibitions at Science Gallery Dublin, Museo del Traje in Madrid, the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, and Museum Rijswijk in the Netherlands. She had her first solo museum exhibition in 2023 at the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, VA. In 2024, she will have a solo exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art and a residency at Pier-2 Art Center in Taiwan.


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