Artist | Featherpistol | Resides | United States |
Website | featherpistol.com | Mediums | Performance Art Video Art Photography |
Print Shop | saatchiart.com/featherpistol | info@featherpistol.com | |
Follow the Artist | Instagram | Facebook | Vimeo | Themes | Rituals Divine feminine Wild Woman Sound Healing Mythology: Oracles, Witches, Priestesses Nature Earth Worship Spirituality Ecological Revolution |
Press | featherpistol.com/musings |
About the artist
Featherpistol is a Performance Artist who has dedicated her life to following her creative passions. Her love of Nature, the mountain community and her then boyfriend/now husband prompted her move to Tahoe in 2017.
“Feather” is an International Artist in Residence for Supperclub Amsterdam and has performed her art at dinner theater shows, circus shows, special events, Vegas nightclubs, casinos, fundraisers, festivals and theater productions. She is excited to be the creator of “Pole for the Globe”,a new initiative that raises money for earth charities by performing her signature performance art in nature. To date, this project has donated over $8,000.00 to charity. Join the movement at patreon.com/polefortheglobe
Early on, growing up in Minnesota, her family took lots of trips into the woods of the midwest for hunting and fishing expeditions. A crucial moment happened in her 16th year when she was reluctantly hunting with her father. She had always been a good shot with a gun, having taken Firearm Safety classes in 6th grade with “all the boys”, as she was an eternal tomboy growing up. But she didn’t actually want to shoot anything, let alone a bright eyed deer. She was close with her father and rarely stood up to him, but this November day in the woods she saw two beautiful doe walk across her line of sight. Reading “Catcher in the Rye” in her treestand, she looked at them with her heart racing, glanced at the gun, and thought “there’s no way I’m killing these animals”. She had to take a stance and tell her father “no”. Later, he found out and said “honey, you don’t have to kill a deer, it’s a hard thing to do, a lot of people can’t do it or won’t do it for many reasons”. In this moment she felt closer than ever to her dad, and she was relieved he didn’t push her to hunt any longer. Her father passed away in 2023 and to this day Featherpistol feels strongly that he is with her whenever she’s in the woods.
Now, Featherpistol considers herself a middle aged activist artist. She stages pole art performances, photoshoots, and video shoots to express her critique of this plastic-riddled world. At 43, she has followed her fire for travel, art and knowledge and lived all over the world – and is now quite happily settled in Tahoe with her little family. Having resided in Los Angeles, Florence Italy, London and San Francisco, Featherpistol has spread her wings and explored what excites her and is now quite content to be living in the mountains.
When she performs, she blends her passion for music with her training in Tiger Crane Kung Fu, acrobatics, sensual dance, art history and runway modelling to create a unique style.
During her formative years, an education of studying art history at the University of Southern California with a focus in Art Conservation, followed by a Fulbright Fellowship in Florence, Italy at the Uffizi Gallery led to realising her zest for discovering and expressing the human condition. She later went on to study at Sotheby’s Institute of Art (Art Business) and became an Accredited Member of the International Socity of Appraisers (ISA AM).
Adding to her high spirit for performance art is her fascination with sound/music/vibration and its healing properties. This led to an additional credential from the California Institute of Integral Studies in Sound, Voice and Music Healing.
Artwork Themes & Subject Matter
Featherpistol stages pole art performances, photoshoots, and video shoots to express her critique of this plastic-riddled world. She attempts to bring awareness to the plastic crisis, give people a community where they can combine forces and make an impact, and try to discuss the constant, chronic stress of the ecological situation we are in. She also focuses on worshipping the earth, calling out to ancestors for guidance, sound healing and equal rights for all humans. Lately, Featherpistol been creating a Laser Goddess series, about a group of goddesses whose powers are activated by the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Their lasers are now “on” and they are using them to protect Planned Parenthood Centers across the United States.
Press
A lot of Featherpistol’s work is done as one-of shows, video shoots, photoshoots and events so there’s not been many big press articles. However, when I was living in SF she was hired to be in a show called Sweet Talk in Tahoe and she was also on a podcast with Allie Stark a few years ago.
CV
Education
During her formative years in the midwest, Featherpistol was always pulling art towards her wherever she could. There wasn’t much encouragement to pursue art as a career in the 80s and 90s in Minnesota, but she kept drawing, sketching, and painting in art classes as much as possible. In 7th grade she won 1st place in the Drawing category at the Minnesota State Fair art contest. She also studied the art of fashion and played in high school sports. Although she won “Dancing Queen Runner Up” in High School, her formal education in art and fascination with performance activism came in college.
She has an education in art history and chemistry from the University of Southern California with a focus in Art Conservation, where her favorite art history classes by far were the Modern & Contemporary, Feminist, and Land Art lectures. She’s also was a member of Take Back the Night at this time, a mere hint of where her artistic and activist career would take her.
This was followed by a Fulbright Fellowship in Florence, Italy at Institute of Applied Physics (Istituto di Fisica Applicata) in collaboration with the Uffizi Gallery. During this time she began studying Kung Fu five nights a week at an Italian Kung Fu and Tai Chi School in Florence.
Returning from Italy and bursting with the need to make art instead of standing in a science lab, she became a personal trainer and started training her body more seriously in Circus Arts. She took pole dance classes, aerial classes, and contortion lessons six days a week. he studied at the SF Circus School with acrobatic coach Dominik Wyss. Adding to her high spirit for performance art is her fascination with sound/music/vibration and its healing properties. This led to an additional credential from the California Institute of Integral Studies in Sound, Voice and Music Healing (San Francisco, CA).
All of this led to more tools for Feather’s purpose: to express the human condition through performance and activism. Knowing the performance art wouldn’t pay the bills, she later went on to study at Sotheby’s Institute of Art (Art Business/London) and became an Accredited Member of the International Society of Appraisers (ISA AM). Her career as an art appraiser allows her to create performances, photos, videos and installations from her unique visionary perspective. Her appraisal practice is successful, and she learns more about the evolution of art and craft every day. The two practices feed the two different parts of her brain, and being a part of Beautiful Bizarre feels like finding a “home” after years of wandering solo.
Education Bare Bones:
Art Appraising: ISA Core Course in Appraisal Studies, Fine Art Specialty Course, and Requalification Course
Sotheby’s Institute of Art: Art and Its Markets
Sound Healing Certificate California Institute of Integral Studies
Sheila Kelley’s S Factor Pole Dance Instructor Certification
Russian Kettlebell Certification
National Academy of Sports Medicine Certification
Fulbright Fellowship: Italian Art Conservation Science
Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry & Art History