Biography

Heidi Mortensen is a mixed media sculptor and installation artist. Pulling from personal history and using elements related to the body, nature, and the space of the home, she investigates themes of displacement, loss, connection to place, and memory. Her detailed work involves casting in glass, metal, resin, and plaster, and incorporates clay, wood, thread, fabric, ash, salvaged and personal objects. Her practice explores the vulnerability of memory, the precariousness of the places we call home, and the desire for connection.

Mortensen received an MFA in the Sculpture Dimensional Studies Program at Alfred University, New York and BFA in Sculpture from the University of Hawai’i. In between these two degrees she pursued atelier training in figure sculpting at the Barcelona Academy of Art to deepen her understanding of the architecture of the human body.  

Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions, was awarded first place at Slice, A Juried Cross-Section of Regional Art by Pence Gallery (Davis CA), and in 2025 will be shown in a solo exhibition at Urban Glass (Brooklyn, NY). In 2024 she received a fellowship to the Cite Internationale des Arts residency in Paris, France. Originally from Honolulu, Hawai’i, Mortensen currently resides in New Orleans, Louisiana and has work in private collections in San Francisco, New York, and Honolulu.