Gwen Heffner Honored at
Rude Osolnik Award Dinner

Gwen Heffner celebrates with fellow artists at Rude Osolnik Awards Dinner.
L to R: Philis Alvic, Kathleen O'Brien, Gwen Heffner and Arturo Alonzo Sandoval.

The Kentucky Arts Council and the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft jointly presented the Rude Osolnik Award to Gwen Heffner on August 15 in conjunction with Craft Conference 2008: Unbridled Craft, in Louisville.

The award annually recognizes a Kentucky craft artist for his or her contributions to the craft community, preservation of craft traditions through teaching and sharing, and exemplary workmanship. Gwen Heffner is the embodiment of those qualities.

Gwen Heffner and her work have been featured in Ceramics Monthly, Arts Across Kentucky, American Style, and American Craft Magazine numerous times. She has been an exhibiting member of the American Craft Council, Ohio Designer Craftsmen, the Southern Highland Craft Guild and the Kentucky Guild of Artists and Craftsmen. Gwen Heffner received the distinguished Al Smith Fellowship Award in 2000 from the Kentucky Arts Council and has been a juried participant in the Kentucky Crafted® program.

In her current position as information specialist at the Kentucky Artisan Center at Berea, Heffner promotes Kentucky craft in many ways. In the course of handling the public relations for the Artisan Center, she always places the artist first in marketing materials, press kits and newsletters. Heffner also directs the programming, which includes two weekly artist demonstrations and many special events that educate visitors about Kentucky and its artisans. As the center's curator, she has put together major exhibits in the main gallery and the lobby.

Prior to joining the staff at the Artisan Center, Heffner owned her own studio/gallery, Contemporary Artifacts, which evolved into a business with several components, one of which aided artists in marketing and promotion; the other component featured Heffner as a curator of national craft exhibitions for galleries and museums in Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and North Carolina.

Gwen Heffner received her BFA in printmaking and ceramics from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa and her Masters of Art in ceramics from the University of Louisville. She also studied forging at the John C. Campbell Folk School with an Early Times scholarship from the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft.

Previous recipients of the Rude Osolnik Award have been Wayne Ferguson, Sarah Frederick, Tim Glotzbach, Marie Emlem Hochstrasser, Homer Ledford, Alma Lesch, Joseph Molinaro, Stephen Rolfe Powell, Arturo Alonzo Sandoval, Byron Temple, Lysbeth Wallace and Emily Wolfson.