Heidi Schwegler (she/her) works in the interstitial ruins of Beijing, Los Angeles, New York City, and suburban America. She rescues haphazardly disused scraps from the bowels of the megalopolis: chicken bones, Big Gulps, broken signs, lost shoes, crumpled pylons, take-out containers. Plastic, fiber, and bone: these materials decay but never decompose. She resynthesizes her sources into facsimiles with cast glass, gold, silver, and wax, resulting in artwork that persists in a “living death.” Recent exhibition venues include Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA; Garrett Museum of Art, IN; WBG London Projects, London; Asphodel, New York; and Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art, Las Vegas. Schwegler is a Ford Family Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow, and a Yaddo Artist-in-Residence. She is the founder of Yucca Valley Material Lab, a platform for making and thinking.

Heidi Schwegler, 100% Chthonic, 2024, tamarisk tree trunk, rubber, bronze, wood, 52 x 21.5 x 12 inches