A legacy on canvas: The artwork of Jeff Hettwer

Inside the Northrup King Building in northeast Minneapolis, a closet is home to more than 100 paintings and might be the most colorful space in the city.

"I just don't want to see them sitting in here for the rest of time," said Kelly Hettwer, as she flipped through the paintings that used to fill a studio 10 times as large as the storeroom.

She knows the story on each canvas intimately "That painting," she said, pointing to a small picture of actor Harrison Ford, "is from 1995, and Jeff and I met in a painting class in high school."

She laughed as she remembered when the artist asked her if she wanted to keep the painting.

"I said sure, and he said, 'Do you want my phone number to go along with it?' "

All of the paintings, together, add up to 13 years - time that began at Blaine High School and then stretched west to California, where one of the works was inspired by the news Kelly and Jeff watched on TV there.

It's an ominous drip-style painting Jeff named "Stress." Jeff went through different phases, Kelly said. Sometimes, as was the case with "Stress," he was channeling American abstract painter Jackson Pollock.

At other times, he was influenced by the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí. But always, through those years, Jeff Hettwer was inspired by Kelly, whom he married in 2001.

Today, she is the curator of that closet. "He just tried a lot of different styles," she said, as her voice started to shake. "And I just look at them and think he was so successful at each one. "And I'm sad for the pieces that he isn't going to make - that we're not going to see."

A little more than a year ago, on June 14, 2008, deputies told Kelly that Jeff had been a passenger in a BMW, driven by a friend of a friend, after a night of drinking.

"The morning the sheriffs came here, and the doorbell rang," Kelly's voice trailed off as she told the story, "it was 7:19." The deputies told her Jeff was killed when the BMW slammed into a parked SUV. "It was just so surreal. The sheriff just picked me up off the ground and brought me in the house."

Jeff was 30 years old. He died two days before their seventh wedding anniversary.

"We just used to lay in bed at night and talk about everything," Kelly said. "And we'd talk for hours and just ... laying in our bed by myself was, that was really hard." Until that night, they lived what Kelly called a dream.

They bought a home on Ham Lake, they traveled, and Jeff made a living doing what he loved. Jeff's paintings attracted crowds at art fairs and open houses.

His style, or better said, styles, caught the eyes of students who learned something different from each canvas. "I think about all of the young people that came into his studio with their sketchbooks and asked him for advice on things," Kelly said. With that voice now silenced, and the last drip of paint long dried, Kelly's last wish for Jeff is that his work becomes someone else's inspiration. "I just really want his art to live on, even though he couldn't."

She now dreams of seeing Jeff's pieces at a museum like the Walker Art Center, where she once smuggled one of his paintings inside and snapped a picture for his 18th birthday.

"And then I gave him a little note that said one day, his art would be hanging there permanently." Later this fall, curators from the Walker say they'll visit that storage space at the Northrup King Building and review Jeff's paintings. It's the first step in considering his work for the Walker's permanent collection.

"I just told him all the time how lucky we were," Kelly said, remembering their 13 years together. "If your goal is to make someone else happy, and their goal is to make you happy, it probably doesn't get much better than that."

At Jeff's funeral, Kelly said their love was more than "10 lifetimes" could hold. What he left behind, she says, is too bright to stay hidden closet.

On the web: Jeff's memorial site: http://jeffhettwer.com

Kelly's Facebook page for Jeff: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=102317336060&ref=ts

University of Minnesota Scholarship in Jeff's name: http://www.giving.umn.edu/hettwer

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