Selected Past Exhibitions
Waking Dreams: a solo exhibition In Gallery 244, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, 2019.
Paintings of Climate Change and Hope
A solo exhibition of paintings by Heather Stivison, on view March 21-April 15, 2023 at Pleiades Gallery, 547 West 27th Street, NYC 10001
with a simultaneous exhibition at Imlay Gallery on Artsy.
“The magic of the work lies in Stivison’s ability to create worlds that are at once primordial and prescient, while using abstraction to speak to abstract ideas of our place and responsibility within the universe. . . Her work crosses boundaries between disciplines, in particular between her life-long passions for art and science”
— Independent Curator Kathy Imlay, New York and Washington
Click for press release
A solo exhibition by Heather Stivison, on view June 11-July 6, 2024 at Pleiades Gallery, 547 West 27th Street, NYC 10001
The works in this exhibition are tapestry of drawings, found objects, textiles, and paintings that reference both physical borders and emotional boundaries. Abandoning Stivison’s usual rich colorful palette, these new works featured a palette dominated by black, white, and grey, while addressing historical and contemporary migration and borders issues through the eyes of a mother.
Special programs included a dialogue with historian Tyler Andbinder, author of City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York; and a poetry reading by poets from England and six US states, presenting works written in response to works of art in the exhibition.
“....artist Heather Stivison invites the viewer in for a closer look to appreciate both the array of mark making and complexity of subject matter in contrast to the simplicity of the pencil used to create it.”
— The Bristol Art Museum
A solo exhibition by Heather Stivison, on view September 2 - 27, 2025 at Pleiades Gallery, 547 West 27th Street, NYC 10001
Some of the paintings on view are the result of Stivison’s multi-year, grant funded collaboration with Noah Germolus, a scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. This collaboration led to a unique special feature of this exhibition. Stivison interpreted chemical data in paint, and he in turn, wrote four original musical compositions to accompany her paintings. The exhibition includes a play-on-demand sound installation of original jazz music composed and performed by Germolus.
“Stivison ventures beyond nature’s physical boundaries into abstraction with the profusion of free-flowing biomorphic patterns and tonal ranges. In her paintings the innate attributes of water evolve into metaphors, symbolism and visual poetry.”
— Renee Phillips, Director Manhattan Arts International
Seeds of Change II
A solo exhibition by Heather Stivison, on view February 21 - June 22, 2025 in Gallery 10 of the Yesteryear House of the Southern Vermont Art Center, Manchester, VT.
An updated selection of Seeds of Change works. With its references to natural cycles of growth, renewal, and hope, the exhibition arrived in Vermont fittingly at the beginning of spring after a particularly cold winter. The exhibition is comprised of 25 acrylic on canvas paintings Stivison calls Ecoscapes. These depict natural objects and symbols seemingly floating, untethered in the wind or in deep and shallow bodies of water. Seed pods, stones, plankton, strands of DNA and nautical charts commingle. Stivison says she is inspired by her reading, observation, and interest in petroglyphs and ancient rock carvings and paintings.
Duets:
Two Artists and Our Big Blue Planet
A two-person exhibition by Heather Stivison and Lisa Goren, on view July 11 - August 15, 2025 at the Marion Arts Center, Marion, Massachusetts.
The artists, who are long-time friends, bring to life an appreciation of the natural world, and the need to protect our fragile planetary home. The luminous quality of the work reflects a fascination with water, with ice, and with observed patterns on earth. The MArion Art Center hosted a televised gallery talk on Saturday, August 2, with both artists.
Tides and Currents
An exhibition feauring five diverse artists: Laura Barr, Eileen Eder, Debbie Hesse, Heather Stivison, Etty Yaniv, on view September 8 - Oct 16, 2022 at the Alexey von Schlippe Gallery, University of Connecticut, Avery Point , Groton, CT.
The exhibition, curated by gallery director Jeanne Ciravolo, included oil and acrylic paintings, works on paper, mixed media, and sculptural wall constructions, reflecting the artists’ unique interpretations of Connecticut's coastal environments, waterways, and marine life.
Surrounded By Water
A solo exhibition of semi-abstract paintings on the theme of ocean water by Massachusetts artist Heather Stivison, on view at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod Sept. 22 - Oct.16, 2021. More info.
FEMALE
A group exhibition on view at the Berkshire Art Museum, North Adams, Massachusetts, June 14 -October 7, 2023.
Relentless, thought-provoking, ebullient—these terms characterize FEMALE, an exhibition at the Berkshire Art Museum featuring works by 31 Signature Members of the National Association of Women Artists (NAWA), Massachusetts Chapter. The works were selected by museum director Eric Rudd who curated the exhibition and oversaw the entire installation.
“Heather Stivison’s “We Are All Exploding Stars” creates its own internal cosmology, manifesting personal constellations of the artist’s own making. Within this cosmology arise organic building blocks, and the Creator is the Mother — humanity takes responsibility for the well-being of the universe in this painting — the Creator is none other than ourselves, a bit of the divine carried as a seed within the depth of the womb. The artist assures us that within our universal memory, is the key to the beginning, and that these seeds of awareness are ours to sow."
-Art Critic Marjorie Kaye, Artscope Magazine, New England’s Culture Magazine, July/August 2023
