Petah coyne peacock virgil

Petah Coyne (b. 1953, Oklahoma City, OK) is a contemporary American artist who works in varied and nontraditional materials including her own specially formulated wax, taxidermy, human hair, scrap metal, silk flowers, and religious statuary.

Art history, family memories, and literature often inspire her work, drawing from a large pool of different sources, from Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace to Miss Havisham from Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. Her arrangement of material and juxtaposition of mediums to create large-scale installations, for which she is best known, often evoke themes of life and death, triumph and loss, chaos and stillness, and beauty and darkness.

Grounds For Sculpture will exhibit Untitled, #1383 (Sisters – Two Trees) in the Museum building, opening October 5, 2024 and on view through March 2, 2025.

This work is on loan through Art Bridges Foundation and originates from the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of Art (PAFA), who recently exhibited th