Deborah Hesse, an award winning installation artist, curator and educator, brings communities together around social, cultural, political and environmental ideas and issues thru her unique mixed media installation art and innovative curatorial and community building platforms. In her artwork she creates parallel, hybrid, shifting environments that explore ideas about growth, materiality and the ethereal.

Her interest in growth and change in the natural world informs her creative practice. Nature-inspired synthetic wall constructions fold and play with light and color to comment on what is real or invented reality, finding novel spaces that become their own universe. Organic forms are reconfigured into map-like constructions that evoke meditative spaces both intimate and infinite.  Some of her recent work has examined seaweed farming and local initiatives that address issues of food security and the environment.

Hesse was awarded a 2019 Connecticut Office of the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship, 2016 Regional Project Initiative Grant from the Connecticut Office of the Arts and Office of Economic and Community Development, National Endowment of the Arts, in partnership with Shoreline Arts Alliance. She is a recipient of an International Artist-in-Residence at Hongti Art Center in Busan, South Korea where her research about seaweed cultivation traditions culminated in a solo exhibition. She has also received a Rhode Island Visual Artists Sea Grant Award, Connecticut Visual Artist Sea Grant Award, a Vermont Studio Residency artist grant and was Artist-in-Residence at Green Wave and Weir Farm Art Center and Historic Site. Her work has been exhibited in South Korea, New York, New Mexico and Connecticut.

Hesse holds a B.A. from Smith College, a Masters in Painting and Printmaking from University of New Mexico where she was a fellow at Tamarind Institute of Lithography. She has been a panelist and juror for many arts organizations including the Cultural Affairs Office for the City of New Haven, the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism and the Sea Grant Program at University of Connecticut. She has served as Gallery Director/Curator/ Board Vice President at Ely Center of Contemporary Art after a fifteen year tenure as Director of Artistic Services & Programs at the Arts Council of Greater New Haven where she developed community initiatives and curated over 200 exhibitions. She is currently Board Co-Chair at Ecoca and facilitates a regional Curatorial Advisory Group.