If you live in the Pacific Northwest, chances are you’ve seen art by Ryan Feddersen.
Thousands catch glimpses of Feddersen’s work in transportation hubs, on the streets of Seattle and Tacoma, and in the interiors of banks and university buildings. This audience doesn’t necessarily seek out Feddersen’s work, but they thoughtfully engage with it during their daily lives.
That’s just the way the artist likes it.
“Public art for me was always the goal,” said Feddersen (often stylized RYAN! Feddersen). “I want to make work for communities and speak to audiences that are not self-selecting, in the way that museums or galleries have a point of entry. I want to make art that goes into people’s spaces.”
Maybe you’ve seen Feddersen’s vividly colored panels of medicinal plants at the Sound Transit Sounder station in Auburn, or the eyes and clouds that peep out from Concourse B inside Portland International Airport. Maybe you’ve noticed the towering mural of black glyphs inside Seattle’s Burke Museum.
And, with soon-to-be-finished projects for the Lake Washington Ship Canal in Seattle and the state capitol campus in Olympia, the public will soon have two fresh opportunities to see Feddersen’s work.
Because different spaces and commissions have different requirements, and because these projects are meant to have long life spans (potentially ones spent outdoors in the notorious Northwest rain), Feddersen’s works are composed of many different forms and materials. But they’re always visually engaging, with motifs inspired by the sites themselves and by Feddersen’s heritage as an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, from the Okanogan and Arrow Lakes bands.
Another common thread? Feddersen’s art always tells stories, although they’re not always obvious at first glance.
Drawing from Indigenous storytelling techniques, Feddersen’s art unfolds in layers of meaning and engagement. A casual passerby might be simply delighted by a charmingly rendered plant or animal figure, while someone else might think about the connection of flora and fauna and their surroundings. Someone else might consider the more far-reaching context, including lessons offered through natural and human history.
With the new “Companion Garden,” which adorns the Auburn Sounder station, commuters will notice the vividly drawn plant forms embedded in jewel-toned glass panels, which cast colorful shadows across the ground. They might stop to read a placard about the work of art, revealing the connection with Plateau pictorial beadwork traditions from the Interior Salish region. Perhaps a passing observer will go on to unearth the edible and medicinal qualities of these plants.
Feddersen considered all this, from the surroundings to the history of the location. During preliminary site visits, she noticed many medical professionals and facilities nearby, which led her to depict certain medicinal plants. But the deeper message, especially in the midst of a commuter station, is a reminder to reflect on the power and capacity of the natural world.
As Feddersen states, this kind of encounter “deepens our recognition, understanding and appreciation for the species with which we share long-term reciprocal relationships.”
In a similar vein, but with implications for government decision-making and oversight, Feddersen is currently working on “The Supervisors” for the reconstructed Newhouse Building in Olympia, which will house senate offices and meeting rooms on the capitol campus.
While touring the site, Feddersen observed the clearly marked war memorials and plentiful artistic and architectural references to European or colonial history. But she noticed that “the things of this place — Washington’s history, plants, animals, people, cultures — were conspicuously absent.”
She decided to not only “celebrate this place” but to remind elected officials who their supervisors really are: the at-risk plant and animal species that will be represented throughout the building.
As she often does, Feddersen injected humor into this work, rendering the animal forms in a playful style on an exaggerated scale. A little pygmy rabbit, which in the wild could fit in your hand, will be 6 feet tall and peering into one of the meeting rooms, a humorous-yet-serious reminder that “the constituents of Washington are not just human people but plant and animal people.”
“Sometimes I just can’t help myself and I’ll put a joke in,” Feddersen said. “But I also use humor strategically, particularly with information that can be very difficult. Humor puts us in a place of mind where we’re in a state of discovery and curiosity. It’s an access point.”
Interactivity, another point of access, has been present in Feddersen’s work since her days at Seattle’s Cornish College of the Arts, from which she graduated in 2009. (I currently work at Cornish but did not cross paths with Feddersen in the classroom.)
She began creating coloring pages that engaged with Native American, colonialist and contemporary histories, a practice that continues today with her “Coyote Now” series. It has taken several formats, usually storyboard-like coloring sheets or large-scale panels that invite viewers to color, while teaching people about Coyote, the trickster and teacher of Plateau lore.
What do people use to color in these pages? “Coyote Bones,” of course, which Feddersen creates by casting molten wax, as a metaphor for Coyote’s cycle of death and rebirth.
Working between these poles of ephemerality and endurance, Feddersen strives to embed interactivity in some of her more permanently installed public works.
Travelers moving through Portland’s airport, for example, will come upon her 2021 installation “Inhabitance,” which involves the public’s movement in its message.
When approaching a panel, you see a lovely Oregonian landscape. As you pass by and look back, though, an eye reveals itself, suggesting a reciprocal gaze between us and the land. As Feddersen puts it, “a person’s action activates the work and that action completes the metaphor.”
“The hope is that, by experiencing something actively, you can understand it in a more personal, embodied way,” Feddersen said.
In the end, Feddersen grapples with complex concepts and histories but creates works of art that are publicly accessible, beautiful and obliquely educational.
“I pursue art because it helps me grow and learn,” she said. “I want others to grow and learn through art as well.”
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story misstated that the Auburn Sounder station, where Feddersen’s artwork debuted in August, opened recently. The station began service in 2000.