The Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture’s exhibition Joe Feddersen: Earth, Water, Sky is major retrospective of works by the artist who is affiliated with the Okanagan and Arrow Lakes tribes, examining his four-decade career working in the Pacific Northwest. Highlighting between eighty-five and 100 works, the exhibition shows the breadth of the artist’s practice and provides an overview of his engagement with space and place, as well as the signs that mediate them.

Joe Feddersen has produced artworks in print, glass, weaving, and ceramics that are informed by his relationship to place, specifically the Plateau region between the Cascade Range and the Rocky Mountains. Much of his work is influenced by traditional Plateau-style basketry, which reflects Northwestern landscapes, flora, and fauna; however, he also draws inspiration from current events, regional histories, tribal legacies, and personal narratives and employs quotidian motifs such as chain link fences, parking lot diagrams and cell phone towers. While Feddersen’s work is collected by major institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the scope and impact of his work has not yet been presented in a retrospective.