Alexa Horochowski

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Born 1965, Columbia, Missouri

Sculptor and installation artist Alexa Horochowski was born in Missouri when her father, a medical graduate in surgery from Buenos Aires, Argentina, was doing a residency there. When she was nine months old, her family returned to Argentina. They lived on the Atlantic in Comodoro Rivadavia, Chubut province, in the Patagonia region, a place so harsh and windy, Horochowski says, that everything was the same shade of brown.¹ On holidays, they loaded extra fuel and extra tires into their 1965 maroon Peugeot 404 and headed inland to the Andean lakes. In 1975, when she was nine years old, the family emigrated to the United States, settling in Sedalia, Missouri, home of the Missouri State Fair. By then, Horochowski’s outlook had been shaped by her childhood surroundings. “Growing up in Patagonia defined my sense of self in the world,” she says. She had experienced nature’s power, finding it at once humbling and inspiring. Today, using such unlikely objects as soil-erosion logs and an invasive plant from her garden, she creates art installations that explore ways humans entangle themselves with nature. She referenced the floating islands of debris in the Atlantic and elsewhere with her Highpoint “Vortex Drawings” series (2016) (cat. no. 167) , monoprints whose marks were made by trash—plastic bottles, aluminum cans, polystyrene cups. These bits of rubbish were coated with pigments or graphite, then blown about large sheets of paper or Tyvek by an artificial wind vortex propelled by eight barrel fans.

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Horochowski (her paternal grandparents were Ukrainian) graduated from the University of Missouri, Columbia, with two bachelor’s degrees, one in creative writing and one in journalism (1988). She then moved to Seattle, installed a darkroom in her kitchen, and began assembling a portfolio. On the strength of her photography and mixed-media works, she was accepted into the MFA program at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, graduating in 1996. In 2002, she joined the faculty at St. Cloud State University, Minnesota, and is now a tenured professor of sculpture.

Horochowski has sought out residencies that put her in the kind of remote landscapes she knew in Patagonia. These include stays at Museo de Arte Moderno Chiloé in Castro, Chile (2017); Forest Island Project in Mammoth Lakes, California (2018); Casa Poli in Coliúmo, Chile (2012, 2013); and El Basilisco in Avellaneda, Argentina (2007). In addition to Minnesota State Arts Board grants (2012, 2014), she has received fellowships from the McKnight Foundation (2019, 2014, 2005), Efroymson Family Fund (2018), and Bush Foundation (2004), as well as a Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists (2000–2001). Recent solo and group exhibitions include “Five Ways In: Themes from the Collection” (2020–21), Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; “Beautiful Sky” (2019), Rochester Art Center, Minnesota; and “Club Disminución” (2014), with her kelp video , Soap Factory, Minneapolis. She lives in Minneapolis.

—Marla J. Kinney