This sculpture is a portrait of Heidi Redd, a Utah rancher whose life remains deeply tied to the landscapes and traditions of the American West. I first met Heidi while filming Collodion: The Process of Preservation, and have since photographed her repeatedly. Her presence carries a rare combination of resilience, independence, and authority that reflects a lived relationship with land and animals rather than an inherited mythology of the West.

In translating her likeness into bronze, I was less interested in romanticizing the cowgirl figure than in capturing the gravity of someone who has spent a lifetime within that world. The surface of the sculpture retains the marks of its making, allowing gesture and texture to remain visible. In this way the portrait holds both likeness and process, a life shaped by landscape.