Ryan Feddersen
American artist
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ryan Elizabeth Feddersen (stylized RYAN! Feddersen)[1] (born 1984) is a Colville artist known for her interactive public art installations in the Pacific Northwest.
Early life and education
Feddersen was born in 1984 and grew up in Wenatchee, Washington.[2] She is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation.[2] Her uncle, Joe Feddersen, is an artist as well.[3] Feddersen attended the Institute of American Indian Arts before transferring to Seattle's Cornish College of the Arts, graduating in 2009 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts.[1][3]
Career
Before becoming a full-time artist, Feddersen worked at the Tacoma Art Museum and 4Culture.[4] One of Feddersen's first installations was "Coyote Now," an interactive piece that invites viewers to use crayons shaped like coyote bones to color the art themselves.[3][5] Her piece "Kill the Indian, Save the Man" was displayed at Seattle's King Street Station in 2017.[6] The artwork was a large map of the United States that, when rubbed by the viewer, displayed a list of Indian boarding schools.[6]
In 2018, her work was displayed at the Museum of Northwest Art as part of their "In Red Ink" exhibit.[3] A separate work of art, "The Post Human Archive," was displayed at the Seattle Art Museum that same year.[3] The piece was an interactive installation where viewers uploaded photos of themselves to an online database.[3] In 2019, a three-story mural created by Feddersen was installed at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle.[7][8]
Feddersen completed her first work of public art, "Nexus," in 2019.[4] The piece was commissioned by the Washington State Historical Society and installed along the Prairie Line Trail in Tacoma.[4] In 2021, she was contracted by Portland International Airport to create a work of art for one of the airport's concourses.[1] The finished piece, "Inhabitance," consists of a series of panels that, depending on the angle, appear to show a landscape or an image of an eye.[1] She returned to Tacoma in 2022 to construct "Mini-Tahoma," a representation of Mount Rainier's Tahoma Glacier constructed out of concrete and blue glass.[4][9] That same year, Feddersen participated in Forest for the Trees, a major exhibition held alongside the Seattle Art Fair.[10] She also painted a mural on the side of CitizenM's location in Pioneer Square.[11]
In 2024, Feddersen constructed stained-glass windows for the Auburn Sounder station.[1] The piece, titled "Companion Gardens," consisted of multiple brightly-colored windows with various plants displayed on them.[1]