Image Credit: Heidi Wanzek, "Stillborn," tumbleweed, iron paint, found objects, pinch pot and collected iron pigment, 2025, 84" x 30" x 30" 

Preview Image: Heidi Wanzek, "Garden Path," found gate, string, and found objects, 2025, 50" x 4" x 70"

Minnesota-based artist Heidi Wanzek’s work begins not in the studio, but in the deliberate act of noticing, gathering, and waiting for each material — tree limbs, lake-worn debris, seed pods, and industrial remnants. She sits with these elements, allowing them to reveal their stories, and then intentionally transforms them. The resulting sculptural works explore the fragile and powerful connections between life and death.

At some point, the assembly of fragments becomes a whole—as Wanzek describes it, passing “the threshold into existence and vitality.” The work becomes an entity capable of inspiring empathy through the physical evidence of its history. “They take on a presence of emotional vitality, seeing a reflection of our human experience in their state of being,” Wanzek explains. 

Each material is unique—like the human body—and parallels our own life and death cycle. Whether giving them a second chance at life or anointing them for death, Wanzek is intentional with where the objects are found, what state of life they are in, and how they interact in the world.

Within the Threshold highlights the cyclical nature of materials and their journey through the life/death/life cycle. Rather than turning away from decay or loss, Wanzek invites us to hold these transitional states with reverence, holding space for grief, memory, and transformation. Her sculptures examine what might emerge when we choose to look closer—to sit with discomfort, to observe, and to listen. In doing so, we may come to understand more about ourselves in these repeating patterns.

Heidi Wanzek is an artist born in North Dakota who currently lives and works in Northern Minnesota. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited in galleries across the midwest, most recently showing work at MacRostie Art Center in Grand Rapids, MN. Her piece “Not Afraid” was featured as the cover art for Volume 6, Issue 4 of Great Lakes by Design Magazine.