Jante Hart

Janet Hart Heinike

A Hart for Art

Janet Hart Heinike, class of 1948, is a nationally known artist and art educator.  She and her husband, Herbert Raymond Hart, who married in 1955, lived in Indianola, Iowa, with their seven children.

She graduated from Wittenberg College in Springfield, Ohio, and was an art educator in Indiana and Ohio.  She earned an MA degree in art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her MFA in painting and a PhD in curriculum at Northwestern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois.  From 1982 to 2001 Heinieke was chair of the art department at Simpson College in Indianola.  She retired in 2004 and now teaches at the Des Moines Art Center.

She has held more than seventy shows including a showing of her artwork at the Richmond Art Museum in 2008.  She has traveled to Russia, Malaysia, China, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia and Tanzania where she often consults with other art educators as well as holds showings of her art.

In comments for the Iowa Women Artists Oral History project she stated the following:

“I was very fortunate to go to a high school that had four galleries in it.  There was a Richmond Art Association which had a permanent collection housed in galleries which were built in the high school fine arts building.

During the summer and school holidays, I went with my mother when she did her visits.  When she had to make a call for a client, I sat in the car and waited.  I drew on the liners of Bill Sharmeer’s stocking boxes.  The stockings used to come with a very nice cardboard box and there were liners between the three pairs of hosiery.  Mother would give me those liners, and then I would draw on them.”

Mrs. Heinike was interviewed by Emily Breeden, class of 2011, as a requirement for an RHS Honors English class.  Breeden wrote the following:

When I asked her about her inspiration, she spoke how the presence of the art gallery at the high school had a great influence.  She was able to see professional art every time she walked toward the art rooms.  She talked of a teacher who assigned them to copy one of the paintings on display and, in retrospect, found that it was a valuable experience for her being exposed to professional art works.  Janet knew Richmond artist, Esther Nusbaum, and attended school with her daughter. She remembers stopping by their dining-room studio where Esther would be painting.  Heinike realized that becoming an artist was possible and that Richmond was a community where the visual arts were strongly appreciated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  380 Hub Etchison Parkway, Richmond, IN 47374

 (765) 973-3338