STUDIO

Thinking in objects.
Work built from long looking.

APPROACH

I work in the studio to understand the world through translation. Materials, forms, and processes enter the space, revealing relationships, structures, and phenomena through their arrangement and interaction. Each object is an inquiry, a way to learn something new through the act of creation, and the studio produces investigations that sometimes connect with other parts of my practice and sometimes stand on their own, always generating interpretive insight.

My work is stewarded by the archives of the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art, and the images below offer direct access to a selection of my work, each clickable to explore expanded context, archival records, and detailed process notes. For enquiries or discussion, please reach out via email.

EVERGLADES CORD

EVERGLADES CORD
LINES OF DESCENT

LINES OF DESCENT
DISEASE OF THE HEART, DISEASE OF THE FLESH, THE BOASTFUL PRIDE OF LIFE

DISEASE OF THE HEART, DISEASE OF THE FLESH, THE BOASTFUL PRIDE OF LIFE
CUPRUM / CYPRIUM / CIPRES

CUPRUM / CYPRIUM / CIPRES
PUSHING AN ERRATIC JUST A LITTLE FARTHER

PUSHING AN ERRATIC JUST A LITTLE FARTHER
COPPER BOULDER

COPPER BOULDER
MAKING THE CUT

MAKING THE CUT
SALT BOULDER ON PLINTH

SALT BOULDER ON PLINTH
MY LACK OF REDNESS IS TRANSPARENT

MY LACK OF REDNESS IS TRANSPARENT
IMPROBABLE OCEANS

IMPROBABLE OCEANS
BRINGING JAPAN TO ME

BRINGING JAPAN TO ME
JAPAN BECOMES SWITZERLAND

JAPAN BECOMES SWITZERLAND
DIVISION & BOUNDARY

DIVISION & BOUNDARY
CORE LOGGING THE ANTHROPOCENE IN REAL TIME

CORE LOGGING THE ANTHROPOCENE IN REAL TIME
VOLCANOES ARE THE ORIGINAL 3D PRINTER, EVERYTHING ELSE IS GEOMIMICRY

VOLCANOES ARE THE ORIGINAL 3D PRINTER, EVERYTHING ELSE IS GEOMIMICRY
INFINITE RESOURCE

INFINITE RESOURCE
GLASS CRACKS

GLASS CRACKS
ARCHEOLOGICAL MISTAKES I'VE MADE #8

ARCHEOLOGICAL MISTAKES I'VE MADE #8
INTER//CONNECTED

INTER//CONNECTED
HOW MUCH CAT LITTER DOES IT TAKE TO COVER CLEVELAND?

HOW MUCH CAT LITTER DOES IT TAKE TO COVER CLEVELAND?

I work to understand glaciers in their absence, through the traces they have left in the Great Lakes region where I live. I don’t have much of a choice but to imagine them. There is a reverence of the unseen and I try to understand it in ways that end up feeling like ritual. Replicating glacial behaviors, mimicking glacial processes, mapping the glacial movement of stones and clay, recreating glacial functions at human scale, playing with the possibilities at a landscape scale, and bridging across time to connect ice ages from the deep past with ice ages of the deep future. The work I produce and the tools I build prime actual landscapes for collaborative activation in the deep future when my objects will yield to the geologic force of the next glacier in the next ice age.

STATEMENT

Ryan Dewey is an artist whose work moves between sculpture, field research, and land based practice. Through long term engagement with landscapes shaped by ice, water, and human use, his work examines how attention, material systems, and place are formed over time. His archive is stewarded by the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art, and his work has been discussed within the context of Anthropocene studies, including by Donna Haraway. Full bio

BIO

CV

Ryan Dewey

Cleveland, Ohio

Education

  • MA, Cognitive Linguistics
    Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (2012)
    Thesis: A Sense of Space: Conceptualization in Way-Finding and Navigation (2012)

Residencies & Fellowships

  • Pollinator (invited) - Foundation for Contemporary Arts alum appointment (2025)

  • Montello Foundation, Montello, Nevada (2019)

  • Alps Art Academy, Land Art Biennale, Safiental, Switzerland (2018)

  • Non//Sense Residency, Gordon Square Arts District, Cleveland, Ohio (2018)

  • ACRE Residency, Steuben, Wisconsin & Chicago, Illinois (2017)

Archives & Collections

  • Center for Art + Environment, Nevada Museum of Art - An Attempt To Understand a Glacier Without Ever Having Seen One, Collection CAE2217, (2022)

  • Solastalgic Archive, University of New Mexico Museum of Art, Albuquerque, New Mexico (2019)

  • Progressive Insurance Collection, Cleveland, Ohio (2018)

  • SLA, Copenhagen, Denmark (2018)

  • Tri-C STEM Center, Cleveland, Ohio (2019)

Awards & Grants (selected)

  • Foundation for Contemporary Arts - Emergency Grant (2019)

  • Individual Excellence Award, Ohio Arts Council (2019)

Solo Exhibitions

  • Lines of Descent, The Sculpture Center, Cleveland, Ohio (2019)

  • Sowing Seeds of Discontent, Baldwin Wallace University, Berea, Ohio (2018)

  • Seen / Unseen / Not Seen, Muted Horn, Cleveland, Ohio (2017)

  • Improbable Oceans, Kickstarter (2015)

Group Exhibitions (selected)

  • Survey #25, SHED Projects, Cleveland, Ohio (2025)

  • This Earth: Notes and Observations by Montello Foundation Artists, Southern Utah Museum of Art, Cedar City, Utah (2021)

  • Small Works, Abattoir Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio (2021)

  • Full Fathom Five, Progressive Insurance Collection Museum, Cleveland, Ohio (2018)

  • A Shadow as a Stain, ACRE Projects, Chicago, Illinois (2018)

  • Ohio Artists for Freedoms, Art Academy of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio (2018)

  • Alps Art Academy Showcase, Safiental, Switzerland (2018)

  • Non//Sense, Uncommon Senses 2, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada (2018)

  • Underneath Is Before (collaborative), SPACES, Cleveland, Ohio 2016

Publications

  • Decoding Quarry Workflows, FIELD OFFICE & Hexagon (2025)

  • “Volcanoes Are the Original 3D Printer, Everything Else is Geomimicry,” Mid-America Print Council Journal, Vol. 32/33 (2021)

  • “Lines of Descent,” FRINGES Landscape Observatory (2020)

  • Hack the Experience: New Tools for Artists from Cognitive Science, Punctum Books (2018)

  • “Reflections on Binational Urbanism,” Archinect (2016)

  • “Hacking Remoteness through Viewpoint and Cognition,” KERB, Melbourne (2014)

  • “Agency and the Multifaceted Stories of Hybrid Places,” MONU, Rotterdam (2014)

  • A Sense of Space: Conceptualization in Way-Finding and Navigation, MA Thesis, Case Western Reserve University (2012)

Select Talks & Presentations

  • Material Grounds, University of Southern California, USC Landscape Architecture (February 25, 2021)

  • This Stone Wants to Go Home, Institute for Land and Environmental Art, Tenna, Switzerland (2020)

  • Restriction & Imagination, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal (2020)

  • Landscaping the Deep Future, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, Ohio (2019)

  • Artists on Art: Alexis Rockman, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, Ohio (2018)

  • Looking to Geologic Pasts to Imagine Future Worlds, SPACES, Cleveland, Ohio (2018)

  • Designing a Research-Based Practice, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, Ohio (2015)

  • Virtual Places: Core Logging the Anthropocene in Real-Time, Paper presented to the Association of American Geographers annual convention, Chicago, Illinois (2015)

Press & Critical Reception (selected)

  • Earthquakes and Gardens: Saint Hilarion’s Cyprus, Virginia Burrus, University of Chicago Press (2023), pp. 103-105, 108, 112-113.

  • Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Donna Haraway, Duke University Press (2016). P.181

  • “La Val Stussavgia ha carmalà il’s artists,” Donatella Bonifaze, Sil Punct RTR Switzerland (July 9, 2018)

  • Interview by Elena Cremona, The Earth Issue (2017)

  • Warren Ellis, Orbital Operations (2015)

  • Nicola Twilley, “Supply Chain Seasoning,” Edible Geography (2015)

Research Appointments

  • Visiting Scholar, Cognitive Science
    Department of Cognitive Science, Case Western Reserve University
    2025, 2014-2015, 2012-2013

Fieldwork

  • Ethnographic & Linguistic Research

    • Nigeria (2004-2005)

    • Papua New Guinea (2001)

Professional Memberships (active)

  • Member, American Society of Polar Philatelists

For discussion or enquiries, I welcome contact by email.