Unseen is a five-week studio workshop series exploring the lives, methods, and significance of women artists who made some of the most powerful and innovative work in American art history — and were systematically overlooked, dismissed, or forgotten anyway. Each week centers on a different artist or group, asking not just what they made, but why they made it, how they made it, and why it still matters.

This is not an art history lecture. It is a making experience. Participants spend each session in conversation with one artist's life and work, then create their own original piece in response — using materials and approaches inspired by that week's artist. No prior art experience is required. What's required is curiosity, a willingness to try, and an interest in the question at the heart of every session: whose work gets remembered, and why?

Presented by Heijeu Arts. Led by teaching artist and researcher Heidi Jeub, whose graduate work at the University of Minnesota examined the systemic barriers that keep artists from rural and underrepresented communities out of the historical record.

Week 2 — Making Something From NothingFolk Art: The Gee's Bend Quilters

In a remote Alabama community, generations of women — many descended from enslaved people — created some of the most radical abstract compositions in American art history. They were making blankets. They had no idea the art world would eventually compare their work to Rothko and Mondrian. They were working from necessity, tradition, and an intuitive genius that needed no validation.

Studio: Participants create an improvisational geometric collage using only scraps — torn paper, fabric, cut pieces — with no planning permitted. The constraint is the point: what happens when you can only use what's in front of you, and you have to trust your eye?

Discussion: What is the difference between craft and fine art — and who decided? What does it mean that these women made masterpieces while the art world wasn't watching?