Artist's Talk Edgar Heap of Birds

Long-time Wexner Center visitors will remember Edgar Heap of Birds' work from the exhibition Will/Power. We are delighted to welcome this distinguished artist back to the Wexner Center for an afternoon lecture, in which he'll discuss his artistic practice and teaching principles. An artist of Cheyenne and Arapaho descent, Heap of Birds actively and intelligently engages the history and present-day situation of American Indians through his work. His projects include monumental drawings, outdoor sculpture, public art messages, and paintings, which have been exhibited and collected around the world.

Cosponsored by Ohio State's Association of Graduate Students in Art Education. Born in Wichita, Kansas in 1954, Heap of Birds now lives in Oklahoma and teaches at the University of Oklahoma. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Cape Town (South Africa), the Rhode Island School of Design, and Yale University. Heap of Birds has recently completed major public commissions at the Georgia College and State University and at the Denver Art Museum, where he created Wheel, a circular arrangement, 50-feet in diameter, of 12 red porcelain standing forms that align with the position of the sun at the summer solstice. His work has also been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian (New York), the National Gallery of Canada, and Documenta (Kassel, Germany), among many other institutions worldwide. Heap of Birds has received grants from The National Endowment for the Arts, Rockefeller Foundation, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, Lila Wallace Foundation, Bonfil Stanton Foundation, and The Pew Charitable Trust.