Kris Heding was born in Green Bay,
Wisconsin, but has spent the majority of her life living in Minneapolis,
Minnesota. Art has been a huge part of her life since she was
very young. She focused mainly on drawing and painting at first,
but gradually learned how to use different mediums and incorporated
these techniques into her creative process. Kris is an artist
of all trades; she's experienced in painting, drawing, sculpture,
graphic design, scrapbooking, knitting, jewelry-making, screenprinting
and collage.
Kris began creating websites in 1997. The first website she created
was The Alice In Chains Real Thing for the musical group,
Alice In Chains. She continued developing the website as her HTML
skills improved, and maintained the website until 2000. In the
years that followed, she created and maintained many websites,
including The Groovy Dougie Fan Club which received press
in City
Pages, Request Magazine and Q Magazine. Currently, she maintains three
websites: her personal website, This Is Yesterday; The Cinematics Fansite, the first fan
website for the band The Cinematics; and her website, krisheding.com.
Kris' senior year of high school was a very productive year for
her. She took several Honors Art courses and spent the majority
of the year in the art department. She participated in several
art shows, including the first annual Art Attack exhibit and the 1999 Hot Art Injection exhibit, organized by
The Walker
Art Center and held at the Soap Factory in Minneapolis. Two of her works
were part of the exhibit; an acrylic painting titled "Ed
O'Brien In Blue" and her website, The Alice In Chains
Real Thing. That same year she was one of three students who
received an award for Artistic Excellence from Thomas Jefferson
Senior High School. She was also given an Artistic Excellence
award through Sun Current, a local publication.
After graduating in 1999, she continued painting, drawing and
creating websites. She sold many of her paintings and drawings
to people from around the world.
Kris began working with graphic design in 2000. By then, she had
already begun using Adobe Photoshop to colour in her drawings
after scanning them into the computer, but she shifted her focus
mainly to creating graphic art. She created CD artwork, flyers,
website banners and other graphics for herself and others.
In October 2005, Kris was contacted by Mark Hathaway, the president
of the soon-to-be official fan club for the band Franz Ferdinand. The band decided they wanted
to launch a fan club, and Mark was in charge of organizing it.
He asked Kris to come on board as a graphic designer to work on
designing the quarterly magazine and other graphics relating to
the fan club.
She continues to work for the Franz Ferdinand Fan Club, but also
works as a freelance artist and graphic designer.