Heidi Neilson

Heidi Neilson is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores connections between people on the ground and off-planet conditions and infrastructure. She works in multiple mediums including radio transmissions, sound, prints, books, sculpture, electronics, and video. She is currently co-operating Here GOES Radiotelescope, a long-term installation at Wave Farm, which is a receiving station for transmissions from a NOAA weather satellite. Other recent work includes Moon Arrow, a mechanical sculpture which continually points at the moon, and Sonic Planetarium, an immersive sound installation made from recordings of orbiting satellites.

From the New York Foundation for the Arts, Neilson is a 2023 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Digital/Electronic Arts and a 2015 Fellow in Interdisciplinary Work. Neilson has been awarded Individual Artists grants from the New York State Council on the Arts (2024, 2022), a Media Assistance Fund for Artists Grant—New York State Council on the Arts in Partnership with Wave Farm (2018), Art Matters Grant—Art Matters Foundation (2013), and Individual Artist Support—New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Queens Council on the Arts (2021, 2018, 2007). She has been awarded artist residencies at the NYC Urban Field Station, SPACES, Wave Farm, Klondike Institute of Art & Culture, Provisions Library, Elsewhere, Lower East Side Printshop, Center for Book Arts, Visual Studies Workshop, and Women’s Studio Workshop. Her work has been exhibited internationally, and her artist books and other works are held in over 100 collections, including those of the Brooklyn Museum, Cleveland Institute of Art, Columbia University, the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, and Yale University. Writing about her work has appeared in Hyperallergic, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and Popular Mechanics, among others.

Neilson holds a BA in biology from Reed College and an MFA in painting from Pratt Institute. She is a board member of Wave Farm, teaches art and design at Parsons School of Design | The New School and SUNY Purchase College, and lives and works in New York. Her ham radio call sign is KD2ESI.