Lee Bontecou might be one of the more famous artists that you’ve probably never heard of.

Although many of her works share the same characteristic look (pieces of metal welded into sculptures that project off the wall, are covered in pieces of dirtied canvas, and feature large, gaping black holes), her idea of getting sculpture literally “off the ground,” and instead stuck to the wall like a painting, was shocking at the time her work was first exhibited.

Known primarily for her work in the 1960s, Bontecou was a popular female artist who had made it when the New York art scene was still mostly a boys’ club. Along with famed female sculptor Louise Bourgeois, Bontecou was only one of two artists from North America (who also happened to be a woman) chosen to be represented at Documenta III, a prestigious art exhibition in Germany in 1964. Although Bourgeois’s name has stuck out in the litany of modern women artists, Bontecou has had no such luck. But more than luck plays into Bontecou’s ultimately elusive nature.

Despite her sudden fame, Bontecou wasn’t very fond of the New York art world which, to be fair, is not especially well-known for being a warm and fuzzy place. After very successful beginnings, Bontecou removed herself from the public eye in the 1970s. Consequently, although her works are in many major museum collections, she has been pretty much left out from the conversation of the development of modern American art. Bontecou decided that maybe being a famous artist wasn’t all it was cracked up to be and that teaching was more her thing. She became a professor at Brooklyn College in the early 1970s and taught there for almost twenty years.

Bontecou also later removed herself  physically from the New York nucleus of artistic activity and thought. Searching for peace and quiet, Bontecou and her husband moved to the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania so that she could continue to make art on her own terms and so that they could start a family. Unfortunately, peace and quiet didn’t come so easily in the country. Local white supremacists harassed Bontecou and her family by attempting to shut down the road that lived on, sometimes even brandishing rifles when people would try to travel through. Home sweet home, rural Pennsyltucky.