Ms. Hillis’s artistic versatility allows for projects that can be individualized to fit a variety of subjects being taught in schools. In Jeri’s own artwork stories are witnessed and put to paper revealing a landscape of memories. As the artist/maker/creator reminds us of the role an actual human touch plays in creating and inventing, as through a mark of pencil or brush, in clay or in canvas, storytelling is supported. Whether the project is creating a vessel or illustrating a book, students tell stories through their artwork.

Jeri Hillis is a Professional Fine Artist and Teaching Artist. She studied at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts receiving her BA in 1985, continued graduate studies in printmaking at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Jeri continues to work as an Artist in Education with the Arkansas Arts Council and Artist in Residency with the non-profit arts organization Arkansas Learning Through the Arts since 2015. Jeri brings the visual arts to the classroom for students PreK-12 grades by enhancing the curriculum through pottery residencies, and other media including painting, drawing, collage, printmaking and bookmaking.

She has been a part of the Hot Springs art community for 16 years, exhibiting her fine art, teaching workshops, participating in Arts and the Park Studio Tours and the Handmade Holiday Shop annually. Working with Emergent Arts she developed and taught adult classes and after school programming for youth and both spring and summer camps for students 6 to 16 since 2014. She has contributed to multiple public art works including several community murals.

Presently, Jeri is part of the pottery studio at the National Park College Continuing Education teaching adult wheel throwing and pottery for youth after school. In 2018, she presented 21 Fine Art Professional Development Workshops for Art Teachers in “Choice Art: Collage and Appropriation” for the Arkansas Department of Education.

Jeri has received numerous national and international awards, grants and honors in recognition of her fine art; known for her oil paintings of historic architectural features of urban ruin landscapes and mixed media collages of detailed butterfly watercolors with ephemeral fragments enhanced by her emotive marks. Recent work involves wheel thrown pottery adorned with representations of flora and fauna in awareness of our fragile natural world climate crisis.

Jeri has been selected as Artist in Residency for August 2021 at the National Park Service, Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas where she will be doing a two-week pottery/ceramic-based residency. A resident of Hot Springs since 2005, Jeri is currently represented and exhibiting at Justus Fine Art Gallery, Hot Springs, Ark.