From Beaufort County Community College 

GREENVILLE — The Greenville Museum of Art recently awarded Heea Crownfield first place in its biennial juried exhibition. The exhibit opened on Feb. 5 and runs through April 24. Crownfield is the art instructor at Beaufort County Community College.

A sculptor and mixed-media artist currently residing in Greenville, Crownfield has taught at the college for four years. Born in Williamsburg, Virginia, she was trained and worked as a chef in her 20s in Cincinnati, Ohio. After the birth of her daughter, Heea returned to college as a single parent, studying in art and religious studies.

While earning a master’s degree from Clemson University, her work was recognized by the International Sculpture Center and Sculpture Magazine. She has exhibited throughout the Southeast, including at the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greenhill Center for North Carolina Art, Fayetteville Museum of Art and the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston-Salem.

“I am pleased that our students can witness Ms. Crownfield’s talent in the classroom,” said Lisa Hill, dean of arts and sciences. “Ms. Crownfield is redesigning her classes to allow students the opportunity to explore their own talent through various means of art. This hands-on approach will foster their creative side and encourage students to explore new avenues of expression.”

Her work embodies an ongoing engagement with process and non-traditional materials, exploring layering, accumulation and the sensuous as metaphors of embodiment.

However, upheavals, relocations and aging have caused her to rethink her creative practice. She has scaled down the size of her works in recent years. Working on a smaller scale has allowed her to focus in on the essence of life in a more intimate way.

These works reflect this shift, her final life-sized work, “Fallow Form,” and two smaller reliquaries that have followed. Reliquaries are containers of holy things.

Crownfield was among 96 artists who entered the exhibition. Of those entries, only 62 were accepted. There was a total of 84 works of art from the artists who were accepted.

Her larger work, “Fallow Form,” was made using teabag paper pulp, fiber, seedpods wood, leaves and mixed media. Her delicate “Whisker/ Touch Reliquary” is composed of cat whiskers, glass, wood, mica and gesso. She used milkweed seeds, glass, wood, silverleaf, beads, gesso, turtle shell segments and dried hibiscus to make “Seed/Air Reliquary.”

Crownfield’s award-winning work, along with the works of other exhibitors, will be on display through April 24 at the Greenville Museum of Art, located at 802 S. Evans St., Greenville.