Annie Heckman

Annie Heckman is an artist, educator, and writer whose studio work explores mortality through animation, installation, drawing, and writing. Heckman was born in Chicago, grew up in nearby Park Ridge, and received her BFA in Studio Art in 2002 from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She completed her MFA in Studio Art in 2006 at New York University's Steinhardt School, with a focus in video and printmaking. Heckman’s interest in mortality and impermanence as touchstones for studio practice began with her childhood memories of seeking out viewings of dead animals on the edge of her town. She looks to these early moments of awe as a reference for her work, focusing on love and death as limit points of experience. Support for her studio work includes CAAP Grant funding from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and an Individual Artist Support grant from the Illinois Arts Council.

After completing her MFA, Heckman relocated her studio to Chicago and founded StepSister Press, a small publishing company creating books on a variety of topics in the humanities, all featuring the work of contemporary artists. At the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, she worked as an Artist Guide from 2008-2013, and served as co-lead facilitator of the Teacher Institute, with a focus on Contemporary Art & Dialogue from 2011 through summer of 2015.

Heckman currently oversees StepSister Press while serving as the Managing Editor for Bird of Paradise Press, a publisher based in Lexington, Virginia, and while pursuing her MA in Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto Department for the Study of Religion. Her current studies build on participation with the Art Theory Summer Camp, a project founded by artist Amber Ginsburg of the University of Chicago. Building on sources culled from this project, Heckman's thesis focuses on literary agency for human and non-human actors in Tibetan Buddhist literature.