The Pulitzer Arts Foundation presents a career-spanning exhibition of work by Faye HeavyShield (b. 1953). A member of the Kainai (Blood) Nation, part of the Blackfoot Confederacy, HeavyShield was raised on the Blood Reserve in the foothills of Southern Alberta, where she continues to live and work.

During a career that spans more than thirty years, HeavyShield has created drawings, sculptures, and installations in a variety of media that draw upon her family histories, traditional Kainai stories, language, and knowledge, as well as childhood experiences in the residential school system. The spare power of the prairie landscape of her home community informs HeavyShield’s poetic, often minimal aesthetic vocabulary and use of humble materials. Faye HeavyShield: Confluences features a selection of the artist’s drawings and sculptures from the 1980s to the present, alongside two commissions responding to landscapes and histories of the greater St. Louis area.

Confluences

i'll know you when i see you

What does it take to make a work of art? What are its environmental impacts? How does the natural world shape artistic practices? And what did this mean in the Middle Ages?

With nearly fifty sculptures, textiles, and books made between 1100 and 1550 CE, The Nature of Things highlights the links between artmaking and the environment in the later medieval era. Featuring a range of materials including wood, stone, cloth, and metal, this exhibition considers the vast array of natural resources needed to produce the artworks that decorated churches and households across Europe during the Middle Ages. The Nature of Things prompts us to recognize how the industries that artists relied on—forestry, quarrying, mining, and farming—temporarily and permanently affected landscapes throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Decorative and functional, sacred and secular, these artworks also shed light on medieval people’s nuanced engagements with the natural world. Some represent responses to moments of scarcity, abundance, or ecological change. Others demonstrate the rich inspiration that artists and patrons drew from plants and animals. Still others reveal attitudes of care and reverence. The Nature of Things is the first museum exhibition to examine medieval objects through this lens, offering new ways of thinking about the relationships between people, art, and environments.

The Nature of Things: Medieval Art & Ecology, 1100-1550

Bestiary

Millefleurs Tapestry

Curtain Panel with Design

St. Francis and the Book of Hours

About St. Eustace

St. Anthony

Architectural Wooden Fragments and Panels

The Nature of Things Intro

Explore the fascinating intersection of art, design, and identity in this special conversation between artist Brendan Fernandes and Joanna Dee Das, Associate Professor of Dance at WashU.

Recorded in the Pulitzer’s lower main gallery, this discussion dives into Fernandes’ project, In Two, highlighting its connection to Scott Burton’s “furniture sculptures” and their functionality. The pair also examine the duality of hard and soft materials and the rich queer lineage linking these two visionary artists.

Artist Talk: Brendan Fernandes and Joanna Dee Das

Pulitzer Arts Foundation is a place where ideas, programs, and discussions about art, architecture, and culture are cultivated.

Pulitzer Arts Foundation

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