Shanai Matteson

2021 Mid-Career Project Grantee | $10,000

Overburden / Overlook : Mineview (Final Title TBD)

Shanai Matteson will create a traveling “overlook” or “mineview” centering diverse stories of women, work, and water from within Iron Range communities.

Shanai Matteson is an artist, writer, environmental activist, and cultural community organizer. Through slow and emergent arts activism, she tries to create a more caring and reciprocal culture, shifting narrative, challenging hierarchical power structures, and helping her community reimagine and transform the systems these shape. She is one of the co-founders of Water Bar & Public Studio. Her most recent arts work addresses resource extraction, rural identity, and community survival. She is a single mother and lives in rural Palisade, Minnesota.

The McKnight Foundation generously enables Forecast to provide Professional Development Grants for mid-career artists seeking to expand their work in the field of public art. Forecast mid- and early-career grants are designed to support independent projects, leadership development, professional development, risk-taking, multidisciplinary approaches, and collaborative problem-solving in the field of public art.