Former Worthington Christian art teacher finds a new space and a new position with the High Road Gallery.
Beth Heisey received valuable advice upon her retirement as an art teacher at Worthington Christian High School in 2021: “Take a year off before you decide to do anything.”
Nearly a year after she stepped down from WC, Heisey found a place to create her own artistic message at the High Road Gallery (12 E. Stafford Avenue in Worthington).
“I was stopping at the library, and I saw someone standing outside the gallery. I asked if they were still open?” she said. “I had taken students there a couple of times when I was teaching.
“(After a conversation with founder Carol Hershey), I started working there as one of 12 resident artists at the gallery.”
When she opened High Road Gallery, Hershey was tired of stuffy art-on-display museums. She wanted to create a space where patrons could watch artists at work and ask them about their process. She bought a white-bricked house built in 1818 and created an artistic collective where 12 resident artists could work and interact with the public.
As an art teacher, Heisey enjoyed taking students to the High Road Gallery because it let them learn about the art-making process.
“They could randomly spread out and find somebody whose artwork they found interesting,” she said. “They could ask them questions and have their own one-on-one with the artist.
“I always thought it would be the coolest thing to have a space like they had, where I could create, show, and sell my art. I feel like a kid in a candy store.”
As a third grader, Heisey developed her calling through a program for elementary school students through the Toledo Museum of Art.
“We’d go into one of the galleries and study something like Greek pottery. Then we’d try to make our own version of it using the materials the gallery would provide us.
“I couldn’t believe the teachers considered us to be grown up enough to understand the art. But it was so clear. It was like the people in Greece left me a direct message.”
Now, as a professional artist, Heisey wants to leave her own message.
Heisey’s work is done in what some refer to as a Japanese style – minimalist, simple subjects captured with a limited color palette. Her work is accented in tones of orange, blue, and gray. It often focuses on her two border collies, Page and Max, snagging tennis balls and Frisbees in midair.
The artist said there’s a lot more being communicated than dogs in flight.
“They’re not just random,” she said. “I’m not there to do a nice painting of dogs jumping in front of a Dairy Queen.
“The message is always about the weightless feeling of forgiveness.”
Heisey initially accepted Christ as a junior at Toledo Bowsher High School. She recalled feeling the power of forgiveness for the first time.
“Every emotion took over my heart,” she said.
When she tried to capture that on canvas, Heisey used objects flying into the sky to communicate joy or forgiveness.
But when she started painting people floating in the air, the result didn’t feel right, so she switched to dogs.
“I loved the way our collies would chase a Frisbee,” she said. “They would go up in the sky, hang there for a second, and come back down with it.
“It seemed how forgiveness felt to me. Each time I ask for forgiveness, I still feel that flutter of being free and weightless.”
While her work is not overtly religious, it often opens doors for Heisey to share her faith.
Heisey’s favorite story was about an elderly man who appeared to be recovering from a stroke. He studied her work and the two talked about the message. After exploring other artists’ work, he came back to Heisey’s work and began belting out “Be Thou My Vision.”
“That kind of stuff happens over there,” she said with a laugh. “I was never good at being able to share Christ through The Four Spiritual Laws or The Bridge to Salvation, but I’ve found the art is a springboard for good spiritual conversations.
“People argue whether art is essential or unnecessary. We can survive without it, but most people seek it out. Art can transform experience into reflection. Art can play an important role in a meaningful life. It can reveal what words cannot.”