Derick Wycherly (Chippewa Cree, Rocky Boy) is a visual artist, educator, fine art printer, and papermaker. Derick earned an MFA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison (2022) and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI (2011). He served as a printer and studio manager for the etching workshop Harlan & Weaver in New York City from 2012 to 2019. Derick is currently the collection manager of the Montana Museum of Art and Culture.

Artist Statement

Rapt Gifts and other selected works credit gift-giving as a traditional technology continued today by Indigenous people. Gift-giving has the potential to relate humans with one another and the land base they occupy. Attached to a gift is a responsibility imparted on the receiver. Gifts continue to multiply and transform as they move between entities. The research includes experiments in drawing, printing, papermaking, and performance.
Pattern is embedded in the natural world, as multiscalar and continuous as the land that supports us, expanding in all directions. Pattern design is an inspiration and organizing principle in drawings that become prints and material for interactive performances. Wrapping objects in patterned paper initiates the scenario of a gift exchange between participants. Relations are formed, extended, and reflected upon as conversations happen while gifts change hands. These ephemeral workshop-like events leave behind objects and images that become documentation. Moments of beauty come unexpectedly from the accidental folds of thoughts packaged with care, unselfconsciously by another maker’s hands, made visible in ink through printmaking processes.