Heidi McKay Casto (she/her) is a ceramic artist and faculty member at The University of Iowa School of Art, Art History and Design. She earned her MA and MFA from The University of Iowa and her BFA from The Ohio State University. Her work has been featured in over sixty group and four solo exhibitions. Casto has been a featured artist with Art Axis, and was selected for two purchase prizes in the 2022 Strictly Functional Pottery National. She was named a 2022 Ceramics Monthly Magazine Emerging Artist, and was selected as an Emerging Artist at the 2023 National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts Conference. Heidi was a 2024 Volkous Visiting Artist at The Archie Bray Foundation Visiting Artist in Helena, Montana.

Heidi creates objects that explore the intersections of utility and sculpture, and feature a variety of playful design elements, anthropomorphic animal portraits, and vibrant colors. Her work explores similarities between instinctual animal behaviors, and behaviors learned through her lived experience as a woman, artist, and mother, gaining insight and inspiration for living with fewer insecurities and societal pressures. Heidi desires for the work to be a synchronistic exchange of connection where care and beauty are more present in daily life for users, and where complex human emotions might be made more discernible through light-hearted depictions of anthropomorphized animal subjects.