Heidi Hardin currently is the Visual Arts Programming Director for the Bayview Opera House. She recently retired as a Museum Artists at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco where she supervised the Doing and Viewing Art and Big Kids/Little Kids arts programs for four years. She received her Masters of Fine Arts degree in Painting and Bachelor of Arts in Biology from UC, San Diego, spending her last year of graduate study at the Whitney Museum of American Arts Independent Study Program for Painters and Sculptors in New York City. She has exhibited her paintings extensively in California in galleries and museums (including the Long Beach Museum, the Triton Museum, the La Jolla Museum and the SF Art Commission Gallery) and has taught visual arts in San Francisco elementary and high schools, art history at the college level at UCSD and National University and drawing at City College of San Francisco. Her most recent paintings, Christian Families From Countries Around the World, completed in November 1998, have in 1999, been widely accepted in national competitions. Her most recent exhibit, The Human Family Tree/A Walk Through Paradise premiered at the Bayview Opera House in San Francisco in December 2000 to acclaim by the Senate, Congress, California State Assemby and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors as a monumental work of beauty for all. Her artwork is represented by Newspace, Los Angeles.

Heidi Hardin’s Involvement in the Bayview Hunters Point* Community
Since coming to the Bay Area in 1984, Ms. Hardin has been involved in the Bayview Hunters Point community as an artist, artist-activist, artist-instructor, and artist-administrator. Her studio for eight years was at Hunters Point Shipyard (HPS), where she exhibited annually in Open Studios and has been an advocate on behalf of the nation's largest community of artists there. For five years she served as an active board member of the tenant's association (The Businesses of Hunters Point Shipyard, now STAR, Shipyard Trust for the Arts) representing small businesses and the more than 250 artists working in private studios at the shipyard. In 1991 she was appointed to the Mayor's Citizen's Advisory Committee for the Re-Use of Hunters Point Shipyard and continues to serve in that capacity.

In 1992-93, Ms. Hardin conceived and developed the curriculum, recruited artists, and secured funding for "The Children’s Mural Program" for the Bayview Opera House, Inc.**. This innovative program was designed to teach a variety of subject matters relating to the community by using art as a learning tool. The focus of the first year’s program was African American Scientists. The students studied the lives and contributions of African American scientists in the United States, and made paintings of seminal events that changed the lives of scientists and our nation. This program was praised for teaching an appreciation of art, fostering creativity and critical thinking. The theme of the second year of the program was the mask-making traditions of cultures around the world, and in the third year, the program presented folktales of ethnic traditions from around the world. The fourth year Ms. Hardin developed an ambitious and comprehensive environmental curriculum that studied the history and the environmental clean up and reuse of the Hunters Point Shipyard. This program has proven to be so effective it is being presented in all five elementary schools in the Bayview Hunters Point community for the fourth year in a row and has served two thousand students.


All the programs she helped develop for the Opera House from 1991 to the present focus on the history of this community, its families, or its ethnic groups. As Program Coordinator and Visual Artist for "Our Part of Town," a three-year production involving oral history, visual art, and theatrical production, she served as grant writer, administrator and artist. "Our Part of Town I," chronicled the lives of the community’s matriarchs. A number of senior women were interviewed by the community’s teenage girls and the stories of their involvement in the development of the community and their political activism, which resulted in local and national legislation affecting welfare, housing and equal rights were highlighted. "Our Part of Town II," chronicled the lives of the senior men of the community. The community’s teenage boys interviewed numerous senior men, and the stories of their struggles and the political unrests of the 60’s and 70’s were retold for the community. "Our Part of Town, III/Music History of Bayview Hunters Point," provided insights into the rich and diverse musical history of the community and showcased the musicians, both contemporary and from the past. Heidi Hardin acted as visual artist for all three projects, guiding scores of community teens to create hundreds of narrative, historical paintings about the community and its residents. The first year, she saved "Our Part of Town" from being canceled by assuming the role of program coordinator, and researched, conceived, and arranged the funding for Our Part of Town II and III. Her part in these productions enabled her to work with a broad cross section of the residents and added to the artist’s appreciation for the history of the people and the community.

Ms. Hardin, for the Opera House, developed the Third Street Mural Project, bringing shipyard and community artists together to beautify the Third Street Corridor, the main business artery of the community, with numerous murals that depict the history, diversity and creativity of the area.

On two separate occasions during the past seven years, Heidi Hardin has acted as the Interim Executive Director of the Bayview Opera House. These opportunities to serve in an administrative capacity gave her insight into the organization’s objectives from a completely different perspective. She has acquired a good sense of balance and direction regarding the organizational needs of a community based art/cultural center, the importance of art in the life of a community and how to bring the two together.
In 1995, Heidi Hardin joined the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco’s staff of artists teaching children in the Education Department program, "Big Kids/Little Kids" and "Doing & Viewing Art," and continues to serve as museum artist and supervisor of this Saturday morning program. Three years ago, she also began teaching "Art Studio," the de Young Museum’s art program for students in schools throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. She has made a concerted effort to include the elementary school children from the Bayview Hunters Point classrooms in Art Studio with marked success bringing hundreds of community children to the de Young museum for gallery tours and hands-on art making activities. She retired from teaching at the museums late in 1999 in order to pursue her career as a fine artist full time.

The Children’s Mural Program, The Third Street Mural Project and "Our Part of Town" conceived, funded, administered and taught by Ms. Hardin have provided hands-on arts experiences for over two thousand community children of all ages, and have included scores of seniors, and hundreds of community residents. Theses Bayview Opera House Visual Arts Programs have also provided on the job training and employed dozens of community and shipyard artists. As an artist/activist at HPS and through her involvement with the Mayor's Citizen’s Advisory Committee and the Bayview Opera House, Ms. Hardin has been endeavoring to build bridges between the shipyard’s artist community and residents of the Bayview Hunters Point. For these efforts, last year, she was appointed as a Commissioner by San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown to the Southeast Community Facility Commission, which oversees the needs of the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood.

*Bayview Hunters Point is an ethnically diverse community in the southeast sector of San Francisco made up of 61.3% African-Americans; 21.1 % Asian/Pacific Islanders; 9.5% Hispanic; 7.6% White; .6% Other (1990 census data).

** Bayview Opera House, Inc. (BVOH) is a 501 (c)(3) organization operating a neighborhood arts center in Bayview Hunters Point under the auspices of the San Francisco Art Commission’s Community Arts & Education Program. BVOH seeks to address a variety of cultural, social and educational needs of the community by providing performance and visual arts programs to neighborhood residents. Programs are offered in the historic Bayview Opera House, the city’s oldest performing arts theater, built in 1884, and in various locations throughout the neighborhood, such as schools and community centers. BVOH activities are supported by grants from a variety of municipal, state and private entities.
Heidi Hardin’s C.V. pg. 2.