Hetman hails from Plymouth, a suburb west of Minneapolis, where he began honing his skills at an early age. He
received a Bachelor of Arts with a minor in Art History from
the University of Minnesota. It was during his matriculation
at U of M where he was introduced through friends to his
wife-to-be, Anna. Theirs is a storybook romance, love at first
sight, nervous tension, butterflies, the reasonable assuredness that this is the one.Hetman says of the romance, “it’s like
winning the lottery every morning.” The couple, having lived in
the Midwest since birth, made the decision to relocate. Hetman
has made the transit to Denver before while touring with his
bandmates, and the city felt like a good fit.
Hetman is one of Denver’s more prolific young artists, teaming up
with unique art driven spaces like Leon Gallery and Indyink. The
exhibition “Nothing Is Yours To Keep” at Leon Gallery was an impressive array of Hetman’s smaller works, involving a floor to ceiling
arrangement of framed wartime photographs tediously manipulated
with painted scenes of deep space and dark matter. The impetus
behind the images was to exemplify “an attack on western concepts
of identity. I use deep space as a visual motif in the pieces to suggest
a version of identity that includes everything at once in place of the
common notion of being locked up in a bag of bones, separate from
the external world. Worlds are turned upside down, heads explode
into stars and it’s all clustered together physically like a growing bubble
universe. It’s a play between meaning and meaninglessness.” Earlier this
year, Hetman took upon the onus as curator at IndyInk, located on South
Broadway in Denver’s Baker Neighborhood, where he has diligently lined
up a roster of up-and-coming local artists.
Hetman also collaborates with other artists, such as William Manke,
sculptor/kinetic mastermind of Boxwood Pinball. Boxwood produces hand
crafted wooden tabletop pinball and bagatelle machines which are meticulously adorned with grizzly bears, pugilists and other details by Hetman.
In late 2014, Boxwood initiated the Bootleg Pinball Tour, a series of monthly
tournaments featured at local craftbreweries that garnered quite a hearty
and competitive (read: cutthroat) following. In April, 5280 Magazine featured a
spread on the pinball games made by the two craftsmen. Hetman’s perennial
collaboration is with his talented seamstress wife, Anna and her textile centric
Lost Champions.
When Hetman isn’t collaborating with other prolific artists, he’s constantly expanding his body of work, propelling himself forward with such strict discipline and
fervor that most people would simply react with exhaustion. In June of this year,
Hetman fulfilled his goal to complete a drawing each day. Hetman explains, “I like
to balance more “serious” work with just riffing off of an urge.” His current endeavor
is aptly referred to as, “Tom Waits Tuesdays