Inside Yolande van Heerden’s colorful studio, it was all sunshine and rainbows as she flitted around the room — pouring paint into plastic containers, hanging large sheets of paper on the wall with clothespins.
While rain fell outside, cheerful Yolande was making sure all was ready for the class of 3- and 4-year-olds who were on their way.
“I live for this,” she said as she stopped and smiled.
There’s no doubt Yolande loves what she does. Her sunny disposition and kind smile greeted every child as they rushed in from the downpour into the studio behind her Greenwood home. A box of blocks and small action figures kept the children busy while their mothers handled the financial business of art classes with Yolande. It wasn’t long before she had each child in a painting shirt and busy painting his or her own masterpiece on the paper hung on the wall.
The little studio sits in the backyard of Yolande’s creative home, just beyond the swimming pool. The small, wooden structure features a front porch strung with colorful flag banners. Inside, the walls are lined with playful art painted by her students.
From prints to space aliens to fabric-covered frames, there is much for the eye to see. In the middle of the room, two short-legged tables are covered with thick paper. Chairs, perfectly sized for young students, surround the tables.
A native of Durban, South Africa, Yolande said her grandmother was her major inspiration to be an artist.
“She could do anything. She sewed clothes without a pattern, she cooked and she ran a farm,” Yolande said. “She never wasted anything, and she was always creating something from nothing.”
The adventurous Yolande left Durban her senior year of high school as an exchange student to Troy, Mont. She returned to South Africa, but soon after, moved on her own to Los Angeles.
For the next few years, Yolande had a series of interesting jobs, ranging from being a nanny for high-class socialite Nancy Silverman to moving into the restaurant world when the Silverman children didn’t require as much care.
“The Silvermans opened a restaurant, Campanile, and then an offshoot, La Brea Bakery,” Yolande said.
It was while working at La Brea that Yolande met her first Mississippian, Martha Hall Foose. They became fast friends and, in 1989, Yolande made her first trip to Mississippi.
“I instantly felt at home here and knew this is where I needed to be,” she said.
It took several more years for Yolande to make her way back to Mississippi. She was employed as international distribution and accounting manager for Sketchers, and she had a position as a preschool art teacher at The Neighborhood School’s Matilija Campus in Sherman Oaks, Calif. — a high-end, private Montessori-styled school using a Reggio Emilia art-based curriculum. It was there that she learned the value of using art to teach across disciplines.
Her own art blossomed while living in Las Vegas.
“While in the desert of Nevada, I became fascinated with the varied license plates that I saw on cars. I loved the colors and graphics. Each one was a piece of art,” she said. “Coming from a background where nothing was thrown away, I was amazed that people would throw their expired tags in the trash. I began collecting them and appreciating their differences. Some are solid steel, some are very thin, while others are thicker. Did you know Virginia and West Virginia are the only states that use Bookman font?”
Using the license plates, along with reclaimed wood and other objects, Yolande creates unique art pieces that hang in homes and businesses around the country. She has pieces for sale in shops around the Delta and she also does commission pieces, often working with objects provided by her clients.
It may be described as general creative mayhem, and that works for Yolande. A free-spirited seamstress and self-proclaimed art freak, she allows the creative wheels in her head to spin constantly. Her eclectic Etsy shop, tomboyART, is filled with her license plate art and her free-flowing cashmere sweater skirts.
But, rather than talk about her own art, Yolande is intent on talking about her work with children in the community. In addition to the art classes she teaches in her home, Yolande teaches sewing classes to teenage students at the Art Place in Greenwood during the week. And, on Fridays, she heads over to poverty-stricken Baptist Town, a historic section of Greenwood, where children participate in an after-school program.
“They do homework every afternoon, but on Friday, we have Fun Friday Art Day,” she said. “They love it!”
Some of Yolande’s flag banners are decorations for a grouping of recently built Katrina cottages in Baptist Town.
They are colorful and happy and fun. They really are good for the soul. I’m teaching people there how to make them. I can envision them strung all over Baptist Town, and then the residents can sell them to the tourists. I believe all the international tourists who come here will want them because it’s a reminder of the wonderful sight they saw in the Mississippi Delta.
Yolande van Heerden, Artist
STORY Susan Marquez
PHOTOGRAPHY Rory Doyle
