Sheila Wyne presents The Strata Series. Strata are layers of rock that tell us stories—sometimes vivid and startling—of geological time. The found and manipulated signs are detritus from our built environment. Signage is a symbol of our species priorities for how to care for and direct ourselves often to the exclusion of other ecosystems.

Wyne is a visual artist based in Anchorage. Her studio work has been shown across the state, the Lower 48 and overseas. Her work is in permanent collections of the Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau and Pratt Museums. She has designed over 20 public artworks.

The sign reconfiguration presents our current society through the lens of future geological time, when all that we have constructed and valued becomes another layer within the Earth’s crust. This work imagines a tactile history, the visual strata of our society. There’s a kind of terrible beauty in that vision.

Wyne has also worked as a set designer with theatre companies in Alaska and the Northwest. She is a Core Member of The Light Brigade – an independent group of artists who design time-based, site-specific art interventions on the local landscape and built environment.

Wyne has been awarded a national NEA/TCG Fellowship in set design, a Rasmuson Artist Fellowship, a Boochever Fellowship and the Alex Combs Artist Award. She has also received grants from Alaska State Council on the Arts, the NASE Development Program, the Rasmuson Foundation, the Andy Warhol and Rockefeller Foundations. Wyne has received the Governor’s Award for Individual Artist.