FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Thursday, September 4, 2025
Contact: Heidi Hagemeier, director of communications and visitor experience, 541-382-4754 ext. 166, hhagemeier@highdesertmuseum.org
Joe Feddersen: Earth, Water, Sky Career Retrospective Opens at High Desert Museum
New exhibition shares the vast creativity of nationally renowned Indigenous artist
BEND, OR — 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.
A new exhibition opening September 27, 2025, at the High Desert Museum in Bend, Oregon, shares close to 100 pieces from Feddersen’s (b. 1953, Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation) prolific career. Joe Feddersen: Earth, Water, Sky encompasses four decades of his career, from wall-sized installations to miniatures and baskets.
The collective richness of this body of work is a testament to Feddersen’s love for the land, water, and sky that have bound his world, both physically and metaphorically. Moving fluidly between media, Feddersen cultivates a visual vernacular that draws upon recognizable signs, symbols, and forms. In everything he creates, Feddersen communicates his Plateau-Native viewpoint of the powerful landscape and our interconnected relationship with it.
“By sharing 40 years of Joe Feddersen’s creativity, from basketry to ceramics to prints, this exhibition provides an inspiring and poignant portrait of Feddersen’s respect for the power of place,” said Executive Director Dana Whitelaw, Ph.D.
Originally from Omak, Washington, Feddersen 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. There, Upper Skagit elder Vi taqʷšəblu Hilbert inspired Feddersen to incorporate Indigenous stories into his artwork. When he earned his master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Truman Lowe encouraged him to explore the surrounding landscape through various artistic mediums.
From 1989 to 2009, Feddersen taught art at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, where he is now Emeritus Faculty. While in Olympia, he learned from and was inspired by mentors such as Elizabeth Woody, the former Oregon Poet Laureate and Museum at Warm Springs Executive Director, who taught him how to basket weave. Throughout his career, his love of printmaking, photography, and ceramics expanded to include large-scale multimedia installations, weavings, and glass.
Feddersen regularly exhibits both regionally and nationally, including at the Renwick Gallery of 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, such as the Seattle Art Museum; the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in Eugene, Oregon; the Portland Art Museum; and the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona.
Feddersen is partial to telling stories, once writing that Native art cannot be separated from the stories themselves. His hometown lies on the western edge of the Colville Indian Reservation. His work recreates the layers of people, animals, and ancestors that have traveled the land throughout time.
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. Consisting of materials such as linen, wool, hide, ceramics, and blown glass, the baskets offer one of the clearest examples of Feddersen’s layering of images, a testament to his past life in printmaking. Petroglyphs appear alongside traffic sign icons and pickup trucks, prompting visitors to confront how we see, use, and treat the natural world.
A vibrant collection of prints and ceramics surrounds the baskets. A 20-foot paneled mural titled Okanagan V (2006) blankets the back wall of the Spirit of the West Gallery. Hanging nearby, Charmed (Bestiary) (2023) dances in a soft breeze created by nearby fans. Made of fused glass and filament, each charm links back to various ideographical languages in history — from Indigenous petroglyphs to modern logos.
As visitors walk further into the gallery, a playful collection of ceramic figures tell their story. Since 2015, Feddersen has created this series called Canoe Journeys — figures in various canoes, catamarans, rafts, and inner tubes made from low-fire ceramic.
While the figures travel the river together, they each have their own story to tell. Canoe Journey: Coyote in Inner Tube (2016) presents a joyful and whimsical personification of the legendary Plateau animal, ubiquitous in Indigenous stories.
Throughout the exhibition, Feddersen invites art enthusiasts and visitors alike to view place as more than just a swatch of forest or a river. There are layers of stories to tell, reminding us of our relationship with and our interconnectedness to nature. Learn more at highdesertmuseum.org/feddersen.
Joe Feddersen: Earth, Water, Sky is on view through January 18, 2026. The exhibition is organized by the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane, Washington, and curated by heather ahtone, director of curatorial affairs, First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City, and Rachel Allen, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture.
The exhibition is accompanied by a 200-page, fully illustrated exhibition catalogue published by the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture and distributed by University of Washington Press.
Major support is provided by the Henry Luce Foundation, Terra Foundation for American Art, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The presentation at the High Desert Museum is made possible by the James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation and Visit Central Oregon Future Fund with support from Cascade A&E.
ABOUT THE MUSEUM:
THE HIGH DESERT MUSEUM opened in Bend, Oregon in 1982. It brings together wildlife, cultures, art, history and the natural world to convey the wonder of North America’s High Desert. The Museum is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, is a Smithsonian Affiliate, was the 2019 recipient of the Western Museums Association’s Charles Redd Award for Exhibition Excellence and was a 2021 recipient of the National Medal for Museum and Library Service. To learn more, visit highdesertmuseum.org and follow us on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram.
###