Cracking Open the Outdoors (And Maybe Spacetime) Through Sculpture, with Cannupa Hanska Luger

Unless you grew up inside a tumbleweed, chances are you remember your outdoorsy firsts. The first time your dad took you hiking, the time your mom helped you reel in your first fish, the first big family camp out or ski trip or the road trip to your first National Park. But there are those special few whose connection to the outdoors predates every single memory, folks like artist Cannupa Hanksa Luger. Cannupa is a sculptor, painter, author, and performer, and his work and worldview is rooted in an understanding he developed as a kid working, playing, and living on his family’s ranch on the Standing Rock Reservation. Cannupa’s art defies genre, but he is always playing with a multidimensional concept of time and memory and uses the natural world to shape his pieces. If that sounds pretty out there, well, it is. But it’s because Cannupa and his art exist in a world where the past and future are always present, and there’s no such thing as “inside” at all.