Arkansas Artist Heidi Carlsen-Rogers is one of four women artists featured in the Arkansas Women to Watch 2023: New Worlds traveling exhibition, on display at Baum Gallery in Conway through October 13. This curated exhibition is a program of the Arkansas Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The other artists in the exhibition are Anaïs Dassé, Hanna McBroom and Aimée Papazian.

In a recent interview for the Arkansas Art Scene blog, Carlsen-Rogers spoke about her background, influences and artistic process. Originally from Ohio, she spent time in the Northeast and eventually moved to Chicago before settling in Northwest Arkansas in 2007. She credits her time in different parts of the country for influencing her work as an artist today.

See the complete interview here.

Carlsen-Rogers’s recent work combines photography with tapestry and thread, creating oversized gardens that seem to magically spill into their environment. She uses a painterly approach to thread, carefully selecting and combining colors to create subtle shifts in hue, tone, and chroma. Her flower tapestries with thread spilling out are symbolic of our weakened natural, social, political, and emotional environments.

In her Meet Me in the Garden series, Carlsen-Rogers explores the theme of the wellbeing of our society and planet, and the increasing fragmentation and growing lack of empathy. Her flower and color choices are intentional and hold meaning, with the piles of thread representing what remains from what has been damaged in our world and what’s left to work with as we mend and repair it.

Carlsen-Rogers’s work has been recognized with grants from the Walton Family Foundation - Mid-America Arts Alliance and the Arkansas Arts Council, and her pieces are currently on display in the Arkansas Women to Watch 2023: New Worlds exhibition.