If you see Catherine Meier, send congratulations.

The Minneapolis College of Art and Design has announced the six recipients of the 2020 McKnight Fellowships for Visual Artists are Eric J. Garcia, Seitu Ken Jones, Catherine Meier, Teo Nguyen, Meg Ojala and Maria Cristina Tavera.

Designed to identify and support outstanding mid-career Minnesota artists, the McKnight Fellowships for Visual Artists provide recipients with $25,000 stipends, public recognition, professional encouragement from national visiting critics, and an opportunity to participate in a speaker series. The fellowships are funded by a generous grant from the McKnight Foundation and administered by MCAD.

The 2020 McKnight fellows were selected from a group of 176 applicants by a panel of arts professionals of varying backgrounds whose careers intersect with the visual arts in different ways.

Catherine Meier creates drawings, animations, and large-scale installations of earth, sky, and horizon — of vast, open landscapes. Large in scope, her projects develop through time spent drawing and deep listening in specific locations. In recent years, Meier has focused on the Sage Creek area of Badlands National Park. In addition to time in other Northern Plains sites, she has traveled to the Mongolian steppe and worked for many years as a truck driver hauling cattle from Montana to Texas throughout the Great Plains. A settler descendent, Meier grew up on the eastern edge of the Nebraska Sandhills. She holds a BFA in Studio Art from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and an MFA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her work has shown in museums, galleries, and film festivals as well as in the very land that gives rise to her work. Meier’s project Standing Witness, site: Sage Creek was recognized through Creative Capitals’ “On our Radar,” and she has held place-oriented residencies at Badlands National Park and Cedar Point Biological Station. A McKnight Visual Artist Fellow in 2013, her other awards include a Minnesota State Arts Board Visual Arts Grant, several Arrowhead Regional Arts Council grants, and a national Jacob K. Javits Fellowship for Graduate study. Meier lives with her family on the North Shore of Lake Superior with the vast, blue horizon in view.