Yolande van Heerden is a fiber artist and arts instructor who has lived in Greenwood since 2011. She offers a wide range of sewing workshops, spanning from several hour introductory sessions to months- long projects resulting in community quilts and dress-making. A native of South Africa, van Heerden celebrates her homeland’s cultural diversity via her community outreach work and draws up the richness of its fabric tradition in her own creations. In Greenwood, her work is multi-faceted – she works as an art teacher for groups of small children, conducts courses in sewing at ArtPlace Mississippi and has coordinated multiple community-wide quilting projects for organizations including the Museum of the Mississippi Delta. In 2017 she was added to the Mississippi Arts Commission’s Artist Roster.