Running says: “My inspiration is time spent walking in Iowa’s wild places. On these walks I notice common materials and complex patterns. I look for pattern networks that recur at different scales, a common web of leaf veins mirrors a web of bone marrow, or the fingers of Iowa’s river systems on a map. Inscribing these universal patterns onto various materials has shaped my thinking about our human relationship within the ecosystem.”

When asked about her recent project, “Cure,” she says: “My home in Central Iowa is 6 miles from Interstate 80. Here the deer herd numbers 400,000. They were nearly hunted to extinction in 1900. Now, with no natural predators the animals feed and shelter in endless rows of feed corn. In my agricultural state they are both vermin and trophy.

“Year round, the highways are littered with road kill. In the early spring I walk creek beds and ditches to retrieve their bones washed away and cleaned by vultures and insects. The incomplete nature of these skeletons carry evidence of the automobiles that struck them and the gnawed marks of the scavengers they sustained.

“I polish the bones to a porcelain shine and then engrave an image of a lacy network onto their surface. With a jeweler’s tool, I carve the bones and remove the marrow from their core. Once the bones are hollow and clean I gild the internal chamber with 24 karat gold. I am building a precious relic of something silent and wild that lives and dies by our agriculture, our economies, and our speed.”