An enrolled citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes of Oklahoma, Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds unites
his commitment to Indigenous histories and land rights with legacies of Conceptual Art, landscape painting, and art in public space. He started his pastel drawings of words and short sentences in the mid-1980s, describing them as “wall lyrics,” iterative and rhythmic expressions of personal experiences. Evoking a trip the artist made from Oklahoma to the San Francisco Bay Area, Boost West speaks to both the spiritual transformation that can occur during travel and the importance of voyages in Cheyenne culture. As such, Boost West is as much an abstraction of the artist’s experiences as a physical manifestation of memory.