Andrew John Cecil (b. 1960 ) has devoted more than 40 years of his life to working in the fields of visual art and cultural heritage. Cecil received an MFA in sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1989. After graduation Cecil returned to the West to continue his work in the studio and to raise his family. Cecil’s knowledge and understanding of cultural heritage as well as his own sculptural expression shared in museums and galleries, provide for a dynamic exchange between his work as both a contemporary sculptor and curator. Cecil’s work has been shown regionally, nationally and internationally for 40 years. Cecil was one of six contemporary artists invited to exhibit in Currently West; Koumi Machi Kougen Museum of Art, Nagano Prefecture, Japan.
Growing up in the American West, Cecil spent his formative years in Kalispell Montana. His family’s deep connection to the land, industry and people of this vast and traditionally complex region informs what Cecil creates in the studio. His work often depicts a contemporary narrative about the American West, giant tools, iron trucks, fence lines, irrigation gates, fishing lures and spent toolboxes. These icons of a passed agricultural and industrial century speak to a lost innocence, a failed cultural notion of a bountiful landscape with limitless resources. Cecil strives with his work to challenge our relationships with one another and land stewardship in the American West today.