Conceived during his Corsicana Residency, the Airbnb-backed project has drawn national attention, with coverage in The New York Times and Wallpaper magazine’s August issue.

Johnny DeFeo’s first major sculpture happens to be inhabitable: a coyote’s head, jaws agape, built over three years on his property outside Taos, New Mexico, funded by a $100,000 Airbnb design prize. The project—featured recently in The New York Times and Wallpaper magazine—began taking shape in his mind while he was in residence in Corsicana. “I had calls with my architect and was thinking about it while I was there,” Johnny says, adding that the distance was useful: far from the job site, the ideas could remain theoretical and gestate. The build stretched and tested him: he picked up concrete construction, a skill he is folding into smaller, more manageable work. It taught him about commitment to an idea. And finding a stained-glass window maker or cast bronze coyote-paw drawer pulls or deciding what paintings to feature inside was what he calls “the sweet spot for me.”

“Everything feels very easy now,” he says, laughing, of returning to his primary practice of lush landscape painting. But “it does bring me a lot of pleasure when someone is truly taken by it and enjoys the whimsical nature and delights in it,” Johnny says. “That makes me happy.” Johnny has had two recent openings and an exhibition with Cris Worley in Dallas slated for 2028.