Clearly Indigenous Audio Exhibition
High Power Voltage Tower and Urban Vernacular
Urban Vernacular: Freeway with HOV, 2008, Joe Feddersen (American, Colville, b. 1953), mirrored and blown glass, copper leaf, Collection of Tacoma Museum of Glass, Tacoma, Washington L10.2023:109
High Power Voltage Tower, 2004, Joe Feddersen (American, Colville, b. 1953), 19 1/2 x 16 x 12 1/2 in. (49.5 x 40.6 x 31.8 cm), mirrored and blown glass, copper leaf, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico L10.2023:110
Verbal Description
Hello, I’m John Hedges, a security guard at the museum. I will be sharing a description of the works High Power Voltage Tower and Urban Vernacular: Freeway with HOV by Joe Feddersen in Clearly Indigenous: Native Visions Reimagined in Glass.
Joe Fedderson, born in 1953, is a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. He created High Power Voltage Tower in 2004 and Urban Vernacular: Freeway with HOV in 2008. Both works are crafted from mirrored and blown glass and copper leaf. High Power Voltage Tower is in the collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Urban Vernacular: Freeway with HOV is in the collection of the Tacoma Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington.
Urban Vernacular: Freeway with HOV and High Power Voltage Tower are located on the Balcony in a wall case to the left of the main exhibition gallery entrance. Mirrored and blown glass and copper leaf comprise both works.
Urban Vernacular: Freeway with HOV, to the left in the case, measures 17 and one-half inches tall, 15 inches wide, and 12 and one-half inches deep, or 44.5 centimeters tall, 38.1 centimeters wide, and 31.75 centimeters deep. This vessel has a round bottom, and its sides curve out as they move upward to a wide mouth. It has a shiny mirrored appearance, reflecting items around it. The interior of the work is copper leaf. This material is also used in the horizontal line and diamond decoration that circumnavigates the outside of the form.
The companion piece, High Power Voltage Tower, is located to the right in the case. This work measures 19 and one-half inches tall, 16 inches wide, and 12 and one-half inches deep, or 49.53 centimeters tall, 40.64 centimeters wide, and 31.75 centimeters deep. This vessel is similar in shape to the one just described, and it also has a shiny mirrored outside and copper leaf interior. The decorations on the outside depict multi-armed power line towers.
Label Audio
Hello, I’m John Hedges, a security guard at the museum. I will be sharing the label for the works High Power Voltage Tower and Urban Vernacular: Freeway with HOV by Joe Feddersen in Clearly Indigenous: Native Visions Reimagined in Glass.
Joe Fedderson, born in 1953, is a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. He created High Power Voltage Tower in 2004 and Urban Vernacular: Freeway with HOV in 2008. Both works are crafted from mirrored and blown glass and copper leaf. High Power Voltage Tower is in the collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Urban Vernacular: Freeway with HOV is in the collection of the Tacoma Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington.
Joe Feddersen created several series of blown glass vessels that depict markings on the landscape made by modern American cultures. His contemporary renditions of highway markings or high-tension wires—as seen in these mirrored, blown glass and coppered vessels—contrast with the markings left on the land from earlier civilizations, such as the pictographs stenciled onto his blown Rainbow Basket in the Ancestors’ Voices section of this exhibition. This juxtaposition of modern and ancestral landscapes frames the two worlds in which modern Indigenous Americans live.