Heidi Darr-Hope

From the time we clutch our first thick crayon, we as humans claim the unalienable right to create, to express what can’t be voiced with words. Creating art helps Heidi Darr-Hope understand what it is to be human.

Having worked as a professional artist and teacher for over 40 years, her approach to art-making and teaching are well honed. Both are influenced by her enthusiastic passion for travel, her quest to understand her nighttime dreams and her longing to find the quiet in the roar. Her art and her teaching are intuitive expressions of the universal search for meaning. This quest has taken her across the world studying spiritual rituals in India and Bali, Mexican death traditions, Jungian Dream psychology, Tibetan mandalas, and expressive writing. Creating Brave®, Darr-Hope’s workshop series, weaves together her life experiences and professional art techniques into an interdisciplinary approach that uses art as the vehicle to promote understanding and healing.


The Degenerate Art Project is a week-long multidisciplinary arts event (July 9–12 at Stormwater Studios) inviting Columbia artists to respond to today's socio-political climate, and unite our local arts community—physically and in spirit—in support and solidarity during challenging times. Inspired by—and reclaiming—the legacy of the Nazi-labeled “Degenerate Art” of 1937, this project champions creative resistance and free expression through a visual art exhibition, featuring over 20 Midlands artists, and one-night-only poetry, community and music events.