---

Joe Feddersen: Earth, Water, Sky

September 27, 2025 – January 18, 2026

---

Place is at the heart of everything artist Joe Feddersen creates.  

Plateau imagery, such as mountains and animals, is juxtaposed with chain-link fences, high-voltage towers, and power lines. Indigenous themes and contemporary life intertwine on baskets, prints, ceramics, and glass. Petroglyphs of birds appear alongside HOV lane icons and pickup trucks, forcing us to confront how we see, use, and treat the natural world. 

Joe Feddersen: Earth, Water, Sky is a career retrospective of the nationally renowned Indigenous artist. From wall-sized installations to miniatures and baskets, the exhibition features close to 100 pieces from Feddersen’s prolific 40-year career. 

Originally from Omak, Washington, Feddersen (b. 1953, Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation) began his career at Wenatchee Valley College, where he studied with Robert Graves, and then later attended the University of Washington under the tutelage of renowned printmaker Glen Alps. He earned his master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he studied with celebrated artist Truman Lowe. From 1989 to 2009, Feddersen taught art at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, where he is now Emeritus Faculty.

While still grounded in printmaking, Feddersen’s career expanded as he explored Indigenous stories and the surrounding landscape through different artistic mediums. Over time, his love of art grew to include large-scale multi-media installations, glass, photography, weavings, and ceramics. 

A prolific artist, Feddersen has exhibited at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. His work is part of numerous private, corporate, and museum collections.  

Museum visitors will be inspired by the vast creativity on display. In the center of the exhibition is a grand presentation of close to 50 of Feddersen’s baskets, a term he uses for both traditional weavings and glass vessels. A vibrant collection of prints and ceramics surrounds the baskets.  

The collective richness of his body of work is testament to Feddersen’s love for the land, water, and sky that have bounded his world, both physically and metaphorically. In everything he creates, Feddersen communicates his Indigenous Plateau viewpoint of the powerful American landscape and our interconnected relationship with it.