Heather Crank

Her films have shown at the Guggenheim. Now she's one of the more prolific artists working with generative AI.

Heather Crank is an award-winning visual artist and designer whose work has screened at the Guggenheim, SUPERNOVA and RESFest, with clients across tech, film, music and education. She holds a BFA in graphic design from California College of the Arts, an Adobe Achievement Award and a silver IDA, and she has spoken at TEDx.

She grew up in Bend and came back to it in 2015 after years in Denver. For several years she helped run the Bend Design Conference, which is part of why this town has the design culture it does.

She now works with generative tools as a catalyst rather than a shortcut — she's among the more prolific artists doing this seriously, and she has been at it long enough to have opinions worth hearing. She's building an installation for the summit with her husband, the sculptor Greg Amanti.

You'll take away: something to look at that argues with everything else in the program. Heather has been working out in public what it means to make things with these tools, without either the evangelism or the hand-wringing.