A STORY OF AN ARTIST
Growing up in Maine, I spent hours drawing with graphite and charcoal pencils. I desperately wanted a camera. It must have been Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom or the Disney Nature films that created this longing. One Christmas, I got a Kodak Instamatic which I took with me into the woods as well as used tissue paper to create filters for portraits of my sisters. It would be years before I could borrow a Nikon from the College Yearbook team and even longer before I would finally have cameras that could keep up with my imagination.
Photography is my artistic tool and partner for communicating our common humanity. It offers a means to gather people of different ideologies into a shared experience where the separations between us can shrink.
This art medium also serves as a spiritual, emotional, and thought provoking companion that raises awareness in me to what is happening in the moment. Through the making of these images, those spiritual, emotional, and thought provoking moments can be experienced by others.
The Journey
Once my dad finished his time in the Air Force, he longed to return home to New England. I was three when Dad and Mom packed my sister and me into a green pickup truck and we journeyed across the country to the mountains, meadows, rocky ocean cliffs, quiet lakes, the crashing Atlantic, and dense pine forests of Maine.
Because we had paper and pencils at home, drawing was my art of my childhood. I wanted a camera. I think this longing came from watching wildlife documentaries.
I was still in elementary school, when I received a Kodak Instamatic camera for Christmas. It taught me to think through the shots I wanted before taking the image as film and processing were expensive.
In high school, Mrs. Wood, a science teacher and artist, encouraged me to enter an art contest for Saturday classes at the Portland School of Art. I did and was accepted. I credit this experience with teaching me how to see the world as shadows and light, a skill much needed in photographic art.
Also, while in high school, I took pencils, paper, my old Kodak camera, and my trumpet with me to Germany as an exchange student. I gave drawings to friends as gifts and played trumpet with the community band. The vastness of the world and the closeness of humanity became part of my life.
In college, I worked with the school's Nikon camera to take images of Boston. This was the art I wanted to create but it would be another five years before I had my first quality camera.
During graduate school, I bought my first Olympus, next several versions of the Panasonic Lumix, until finally I came to a Sony, a camera that could finally keep up with my imagination and storytelling.
My art is one of the ways I communicate the need for embracing our shared humanity, the something more that some would call the Divine, and to offer visual commentaries.
Creating powerful visual commentaries.
Journalist, Photojournalist, Pastor
1 year as photography editor volunteer at the Human Society Silicon Valley, California.
5 years as Photography Judge of at the Southeast Spokane County Fair
6 years as a journalist and staff photographer with Spokane Faith and Values
7 years as Community Photography Workshop leader.
8 years as a photographer with Sravasti Abbey, Newport, WA
8 years as a freelance contributor to The Fig Tree Newspaper
16 years of weekly images made as a projected worship bulletin and images used for our web presence, newsletters, and yearly review.
36 years in parish ministry currently with Veradale United Church of Christ
Prior to ordination:
5 years as Music/Recreation Therapist working to improve the quality of life for developmentally delayed adults.
Skills/Knowledge Areas
- Communication through public speaking, written media, and keynote speeches.
- Partnership with the governing boards to meet the needs of those we serve.
- Redirection of programs to track to long range vision
- Creativity with a purpose: Certified Music Therapist, technology enthusiast for outreach, liturgical artist, fine art photography.
Awards and Publication
2025 The Eye of Photography, 9 documents from “Two Tales of One City” https://loeildelaphotographie.com/en/genavieve-heywood/
2025 Art Doc Gallery, Two images from “The Pledge of Allegiance” https://www.artdoc.photo/online-exhibition/echoes-of-being
2023 Inland Northwest Woman of the Year 2023
2022 Lilly Endowment Clergy Renewal Grant
2022 and 2020 PNCUCC Solidarity Grant given to churches active in social justice.
2021 Nominee for the Eva Lassman Take Action Against Hate Award
2019 Faith Action Network Interfaith Leadership Award in addressing white supremacy and Christian Dominionism.
Art Employment
1993 to present
Produce multimedia worship experiences and social media presence from 2014 to present as Pastor of Veradale United Church of Christ, Spokane Valley, WA. And from 1993-2014 as Pastor, Congregational Community Church, UCC, Sunnyvale, CA
Art Employment continued
2017 - present Photographer for Sravasti Abbey
Creating images for books written by Venerable Thubten Chodron, Abbess as well as capturing multi-day events in silence, no use of flash, and at a distance to ensure the focus of the participants remains on the teachings.
2018 - present, Journalist and Photographer
Spokane Faith and Values
2023 Two Community Presentations
“The Powerful Art of Communal Repentance” Presentations about the use of art to communicate the difficult aspects of history in public spaces.
2023 Gonzaga International Conference on Hate Studies Presentation
“Encountering Our Common Humanity Through Many Arts” overview of how Faith Leaders and Leaders of Conscience of Eastern Washington and North Idaho have experimented with using visual arts, storytelling, vigils, and solidarity to focus on our common humanity in an environment of hostility from Christian Dominionist and white supremacists. Included looking forward with using public art to connect across divisions. https://repository.gonzaga.edu/icohs/2023/7videos/18/
2022 Accredited media for the 11th World Council of Churches Assembly
Working on behalf of The Fig Tree News
2018, June 16 “Buddhist Nuns @ the MAC”
A one-day public event at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture’s community building designed to engage curious Spokanites with local Tibetan Buddhism. A small gallery of my images that capture the intersection and adaptation of Tibetan Buddhist monastic culture into a unique American religious community were framed, available, and sold.
2016-2019, 2024 Photography Judge
Southeast Spokane Country Fair
Degrees and Ordination
Andover Newton Theological School, Newton, MA., Master of Divinity
Emmanuel College, Boston, MA., Double BA, Music Therapy and German
Ordination: Cumberland Association, Maine Conference UCC
Web Presence
https://genheywoodphotography.mypixieset.com/
https://favs.news/?s=Gen+Heywood+photo+essay
https://www.instagram.com/gen_heywood_photography/
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61576601913623