The CWU Sarah Spurgeon Gallery in Ellensburg, WA, will host a solo exhibition by Native American artist RYAN! Feddersen. The opening events will take place on Thursday, September 28 with an artist talk from 4 to 5 p.m. in the SURC Theatre, Room 210. A reception will be held in the Sarah Spurgeon Gallery (Randall Hall, Room 141) directly following the talk, from 5 to 7 p.m.
Ryan Elizabeth Feddersen specializes in creating compelling site-specific installations and public artworks that invite people to consider their relationships to the environment, technology, society, and culture. Using metaphor, historical research, traditional Plateau storytelling, and pop culture influences, she creates visual allegories that provide the public with opportunities for exploration, introspection, and epiphany. Feddersen is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, from the Okanogan and Arrow Lakes bands, and of mixed European descent.
Signal Traces brings together past and recent works, including selections from site-specific installations, prints created in residency at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and glass vessels blown at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington. The centerpiece of the exhibit is a thirty-eight-foot-wide vinyl mural titled Manifest Signs IV that depicts the trickster Coyote wandering through an urban waste landscape marred by an oil spill and a landfill of bison bones.
Feddersen received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, in 2009. She recently completed permanent public artworks Inhabitance for the Portland International Airport, Schema for CitizenM Pioneer Square, and Antecedents for the University of Washington. She has created large-scale site-specific pieces and interactive installations for Arts Commissions, Museums, College Galleries, and Art Centers throughout North America and is a 2018 National Fellow in Visual Art with the Native Arts and Culture Foundation.
Signal Traces will remain on view through October 21. Sarah Spurgeon Gallery is in Randall Hall on Dean Nicholson Boulevard and is open weekdays 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., and on Saturdays, 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. The gallery is closed on Sundays and university holidays.
Media contact: Heather Horn Johnson, Gallery Manager, 509-963-3153 or heather.johnson@cwu.edu