Heidi Wastweet, FNSS is the 2025 NSS Affiliated Artist-in-Residence at Chesterwood. Wastweet will spend the month of June working in the Morris Center Studio on Chesterwood’s campus. Accompanying artist talks and open studios will be announced.

Miguel A. Rodríguez, Executive Director of Chesterwood, joined NSS Fellows Simon Kogan and Nilda Comas in selecting this year’s artist-in-residence.

Wastweet served as the Chief Engraver for Sunshine Mint for eleven years, and lead designer/sculptor for Global Mint for five years. From 2010 to 2018, she served on the US Mint’s Citizen’s Coinage Advisory Committee (CCAC) in the seat of specialist in sculpture/medallic arts. She then served as an independent designer for the US Mint from 2019 to 2023 as part of the Artist Infusion Program. Her medals are in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian, the British Museum (coins and medals collection), the American Numismatic Society, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Vatican Collection.

An advocate for advancing the medallic arts, Wastweet is a past President of the American Medallic Sculpture Association (AMSA), current editor of the AMSA Member’s Exchange, and an active member of The International Art Medal Federation (FIDEM). She teaches an annual sculpture workshop at Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina and, in 2017, created the Brookgreen Medal; it is the first square-shaped medal in the series.

In 2024, Wastweet received the American Numismatic Society’s Numismatic Art Award for Excellence in Medallic Sculpture for lifetime achievement.

Chesterwood is the former summer home, studio, and gardens of Daniel Chester French (1850 – 1931). French, a founding member of the National Sculpture Society’s and one of America’s foremost sculptors, is best known for his sculptures of the Minute Man and for the seated figure at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. While his works in-the-round are well recognized, Wastweet feels his lesser-known medals are no less worthy of attention. She looks forward to the opportunity to work and study at Chesterwood, to sit with the collection and to create a series of relief sculptures in the exact lighting that French found so important. Situated on 122 acres in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Chesterwood is recognized as both a National Historic Landmark and a Massachusetts Historic Landmark.