Edgar Heap of Birds


Edgar Heap of Birds is a multi-disciplinary artist. His art contributions include public art messages, large scale drawings, Neuf Series acrylic paintings, prints, and monumental porcelain enamel on steel outdoor sculpture.
He is Southern Cheyenne and enrolled in the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes.

Early life and education

Hachivi Edgar Heap of Birds was born on November 22, 1954 in Wichita, Kansas, where his father worked in the aeronautical industry. He attended East High School in Wichita and graduated in 1972. After graduation, Heap of Birds studied at Haskell Indian School in Lawrence, Kansas.
In 1976 Heap of Birds earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas and in 1979 he received his Master of Fine Arts from Temple University's Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In between his undergraduate and graduate studies, Heap of Birds also classes at the Royal College of Art in London, England from 1976-1977.
In 2008, Heap of Birds was awarded an Honorary Doctors of Fine Arts from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, Massachusetts.
In 2018, Heap of Birds was awarded an honorary doctorate of arts degree from the California Institute of the Arts at the Institute’s 2018 commencement ceremony on May 11.

Professional career

Heap of Birds has taught as Visiting Professor at Yale University, Rhode Island School of Design, and Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, South Africa. At the University of Oklahoma, Heap of Birds teaches in Native American Studies and previously taught Fine Arts.
He is known for text-based conceptual art, such as Dead Indian Stories in the Honolulu Museum of Art. It superficially resembles public signage, but is actually commentary on the Native American experience. An example of his site-specific public signage projects is Building Minnesota, a signage installation mounted on the banks of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota and commissioned by the Walker Art Center. In it, Heap of Birds set forty large, metal, billboard-like signs along Minneapolis's downtown riverfront. The signs honored the forty Dakota men who were sentenced to death by Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson after the US-Dakota Conflict of 1862, in what is the largest mass execution in American history. The piece became a focal point "of mourning and remembrance to which people brought gifts and offerings" in memory of the men who were executed.
Recently Heap of Birds created a fifty-foot signature, outdoor sculpture titled: "Wheel," as a signature entrance piece for the Gio Ponti building of the Denver Art Museum. The circular porcelain enamel on steel work was commissioned by The Denver Art Museum and is inspired by the traditional Medicine Wheel of the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming.

Awards

Heap of Birds has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, The Wallace Foundation, the Bonfil Stanton Foundation, and The Pew Charitable Trusts.
In 2012, Heap of Birds was named a Fellow of United States Artists.

Books