Current Perspectives: Exploring Home, Habitat, and Artistic Freedom with Katherine Hair Eagle (’07 Printmaking)
09.29.2025
Katherine Hair Eagle, whose sculptural work explores turtles, coyotes, and autobiographical themes, will discuss her artistic approach in the Current Perspectives Lecture on Thursday, October 2, at 7 p.m. in Epperson Auditorium.
In a gallery, artwork is typically accompanied by a small label that provides key information, such as the title of the piece and the materials or mediums used. For example, you might see Example Painting, oil and acrylic on canvas, or Untitled Sculpture, vinyl, fabric, and LED lights.
But currently on view at Leedy-Voulkos Art Center as part of the exhibition As Grass Grows (September 5–November 21), Katherine Hair Eagle’s Turtle Derby: You Can’t Go Home Again (2022) features a materials list notable for both its length and specificity.
Turtle Derby: You Can’t Go Home Again (2022)
Wax, chalk, soil from: East of the bridge by Bird Creek, Dirt by barn, Garden in the lower 40, School dirt from bottom washout, South of driveway off Elwood, Route 5 & Scenic at the Northwest corner, Zoo lot, Woods across the street, Bottom pasture - north side, Behind the Dollar Tree off Elm, 71st street and Hagar Creek - south side, Across from feed store, East of Downtown Airport between it and the MO River, Wyandotte County Lake - western shore, Fox River Trail by the old mill, Holding pond in front of Lowe’s, Behind the mailboxes at the bottom of the drive, Empty lot where the old Luby’s used to be - south end, Luckystone Drive north of the bridge, West side of the road before the T, Love’s in Rolla, MO, Woods behind the parking lot for the shooting range, Gillam Park - north ditch, Top of the mountain bike trail - 20 ft past the trail head sign, Left of the pull off where washing machine was dumped last summer, Haybarn thicket, The yard with the tire swing, By the bluebird boxes on top, Ravine - SE side, Pasture by treeline, Northern acreage near stock pond, Baseball field on the train track side, Creek at the back of the yard, Landing field - unmowed pasture, In the bottom by big Pecan.
“Each of the listed dirts are either from a site of a turtle race or from a site where someone has found a turtle,” Hair Eagle explains. “And each individual soil gets made into a turtle.”
Katherine Hair Eagle, a 2007 Printmaking alumna of the Kansas City Art Institute, is currently a professor in the Tulsa Community College printmaking department. She will give the Current Perspectives Lecture on Thursday, October 2 (7 p.m. in Epperson Auditorium) to discuss her work and what has brought her to her current artistic approach.
“I think people look at my work and immediately they're like, ‘Well, those aren't prints,’” she says.
“I do also make prints, but it's the sculptural installation pieces that tend to get more attention. But they are all made in multiple so I do think of them all as prints. And that was something that KCAI really was instrumental in fostering for me because I never, never had a professor there that was like, ‘No,’” she says.
So Why Turtles?
Many of Hair Eagle’s works focus on animals, but Turtle Derby: You Can’t Go Home Again was inspired by research on turtle races, a tradition that some people know about, while others do not.
“They happened during state fairs, or, I remember as a kindergartner, being assigned to try to catch a box turtle. Then everybody brought their turtles to school, and we raced them. People are doing them less as awareness spreads, because, and this is what I discovered in my research, it ends up being very bad for the turtles since they are relatively solitary,” she says.
Box turtles have strong site fidelity, rarely straying more than a few acres from where they are born. After a turtle derby, humans often return them to random locations after having exposed them to diseases carried by other racers. As a result, the turtles wander, starve, or succumb to illness, Hair Eagle explains.
“And I started this work because I was feeling very homesick. All of this work is autobiographical,” she says.
"I do also make prints, but it's the sculptural installation pieces that tend to get more attention. But they are all made in multiple so I do think of them all as prints."
During her deep dive, she discovered a Facebook group called the Turtle Race Task Force. Essentially, the members would go to the turtle races and try to talk people out of it. The response to these conversations went as you might expect.
“A lot of people were mad that they would even be there. It’s been interesting to observe this group trying to do right by the turtles, while also seeing them as conduits for how to interact with people who believe differently than you, especially in our current political climate,” she says.
Hair Eagle began having people send her soil from turtle derby sites or locations where turtles were found, incorporating it directly into her work. She created turtle-shaped molds, and each piece is cast in wax mixed with the soil, establishing a tangible connection between the sculpture and the turtles’ original or relocated habitats.
“Initially I was very particular. I knew which turtle was which dirt,” she says.
“But now over time I've lost that information, and I don't hate that for the piece. That's what it’s kind of about, losing your sense of home.”
Creative Leeway
Reflecting on her time as a student at the Kansas City Art Institute, she says the extent of creative freedom was unexpected and she fully tested that leeway. She recalls one project that took over the entryway to KCAI’s East Building and Printmaking department.
“I was thinking about stagnation and like stagnant water. So I made all these giant mosquito larvae out of sugar. I loved the idea of forcing people to interact with my work because they literally need to walk through the hallway. And I wanted people to just crush them,” she says.
She says these continuing artistic exercises have shown her that it’s okay to work outside of the bounds of how you think you're being defined or how other people are talking about your work.
“If I had to congeal the one thing I took away from my time at Kansas City Art Institute, it's that things that seem like rules are probably not actually rules. You just made them up in your head and they're probably holding you back,” she says.
"Things that seem like rules are probably not actually rules. You just made them up in your head and they're probably holding you back."
Instead, she recommends a different kind of mindset, one that embraces chance and coincidence. She points to the coyote as an animal that reflects this existence, intersecting with humanity.
“I’ve had multiple encounters where you’re walking down a path, and all of a sudden one appears in front of you. You pause and have this moment of eye contact with the coyote before it moves on. I feel like those kinds of encounters are always powerful and meaningful, even though they’re just random happenings,” Hair Eagle says.
She is also drawn to coyotes because they are wild animals that can coexist with humans, even those who dislike them, such as farmers, small dog owners, and people who post on NextDoor. That’s the reality for these fringe animals, living on the edges of human settlements and benefiting from many of the same resources we do.
Her piece We All Live Downstream (2022) pays tribute to the keystone species with fountains flowing from the eyes of coyote sculptures, each crying into the next’s pool. It forms a closed system of tears, illustrating that if one coyote is removed from the ecosystem, another will take its place. But if they are all removed, the resulting deficit disrupts the ecosystem and triggers further problems.
“It’s also less directly about coyotes,” she says. “I do like them as a… Well, ‘icon’ is the wrong word, but they’re another trope or motif that I like to use in my work.”