The Ohio Artist Registry (OAR) is an exciting opportunity for artists to share their work, connect with the creative community, and establish an online presence—all on a free, virtual platform! The OAR encourages artists working in all art forms, throughout Ohio and beyond,  to create a profile, which allows them to better promote themselves and their work. Being listed in the OAR provides artists with new opportunities to share their work with clients, galleries, patrons, and audiences. A listing in the OAR does not confer an endorsement, approval, or verification by the Ohio Arts Council.
For more information, contact Kathy Signorino, artist programs director, at kathy.signorino@oac.ohio.gov or 614-728-6140.

2024 Ohio Artist Registry Juried Exhibition

AJ Heckman

Website: Artist Website

Bio

AJ Heckman is a resident and native of Columbus, Ohio. Heckman has been a creative arts specialist in special needs early childhood education since 2018. He earned his BFA in Studio Painting and Drawing from Ohio University.

Heckman led and performed in a band as a singer, songwriter and guitar player from 2006 to 2014. He continues to record and write music with his current band Locust Hill Sleepers.

As a PTSD, cancer and bipolar disorder survivor, AJ is a mental health advocate and believer in the healing power of art and having an art practice.

Artist Statement

My art practice is built on a drive to search the subconscious and reflect back hidden meanings and lost passages, with space for open interpretation. Figuration, landscape and abstraction blur as I work through planned or improvisational explorations of pattern, rhythm, line and emotion as color.  Color is for me a way to move emotion and build mystery through contradiction.  The work is a flowing river washing over psychic damages of mental disorder and disease, cleansing, healing and bringing deeper feelings up to the
surface. Together my art and my practice serve as an outlet, a mirror and a place to feel and explore things like mortality, mental illness, and simply being human. Above all, my work is a celebration of life.