Remembering Carol Hepper

Carol Hepper, a noted New York City sculptor and Corson County native, died April 29, 2021, at her New York City home as a result of cancer.

Hepper, 67 and a 1975 fine arts graduate, was selected as a Distinguished Alumna in 1997.

She recently created the Carol Hepper Foundation Award. The first recipient of the $5,000 scholarship award to a rising junior studio art major at SDSU was announced in May. 

After graduating, Hepper was working in relative obscurity on her family’s ranch near McLaughlin when her large-scale sculptures that combined animal hides, bones and willow branches drew the attention of curators at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. 

In 1983, she was included in the museum’s exhibition, New Perspectives in American Art, and in 1985 moved to New York City, where she continued to work with materials—twisting, bending and weaving hides and willow saplings— that her dad collected and sent to her from South Dakota. In the next decade, big city surroundings influenced Hepper to integrate man-made materials with the organic, such as copper tubing and metal fittings used for plumbing.

One of Hepper’s major recognitions came when her copper and steel sculpture “Vertical Void” was one of 12 works selected to appear in the First Ladies Sculpture Garden at the White House April 5-Sept. 10, 1995. The exhibition was organized by the American Association of Art Museum Directors to continue what First Lady Hillary Clinton called “the rich diversity of American creativity.”

Her work now is in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim, in New York.

Hepper was a visiting lecturer at Brandeis University, Princeton University, the Maryland Art Institute, Rhode Island School of Design and the SDSU School of Design.

Hepper is survived by her partner of 30 years, Laura Sejen; by her siblings Terry Hepper, Ward Hepper, Gail Bonn, Tom Hepper, Curt Hepper, Monty Hepper, Jeff Hepper and their families, including 20 nieces and nephews; and by her mother, Lavern Hepper.