Object Record
Images
Metadata
Object ID Number |
CSP 03-105 |
Artist |
Feddersen, Joe |
Title |
Wyit View |
Date |
2003 |
Medium |
Six-color lithograph |
Credit Line |
Crow's Shadow Institute of the Arts Archive |
Culture |
North America / United States / Washington / Colville |
Collection |
Crow's Shadow Institute of the Arts |
Object Name |
|
Description |
Abstract representation of a valley view, with colorful mountian designs, cultural symbolism, and modern schematics |
Exhibit Label Copy |
Joe Feddersen now lives where he grew up, in Omak, Washington, on the edge of the Colville Reservation. In his career, Feddersen has worked in painting, three-dimensional constructions such as basketry and glass sculpture, photography, and computer-generated imagery, but he is best known as a virtuoso printmaker. Feddersen studied printmaking first at Wenatchee Community College, then the University of Washington for his BFA, and finally, the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he received an MFA. From 1989 to 2009 he taught art at Evergreen State College in Olympia. Feddersen merges Columbia River Plateau Indigenous aesthetics with a modernist sensibility. He addresses memory of place through abstraction based upon geometric Indigenous basket designs as well as modern urban design elements. In Wyit View, which roughly translates to "Valley View," colorful mountain designs are layered with cul-de-sacs on the Umatilla Indian reservation. The meaning of this print was transformed during its making. It changed from a celebration of a building project on the Umatilla reservation, cancelled because ancestral remains were found at the site, to a reminder of the respect the tribes have for their ancestors. The cancellation came at a high cost to the tribes through the loss of federal funding, but to Feddersen the tribes' actions told the world where their priorities are. They chose not to disturb the remains and forfeited the money. Feddersen acknowledged the beauty and integrity of this choice. |