Steve Keister is a sculptor born in 1949 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who lives and works in New York, with a studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. He builds mixed-media sculptures from glazed ceramic, cardboard, wood, and acrylic paint, a practice that grew out of experiments with salvaged styrofoam and packing materials and their formal echoes of Pre-Columbian architecture. Following a 1979 trip to Mexico, Keister developed a recurring vocabulary of Mesoamerican-inflected animal and hybrid-deity forms, including bats, coyotes, and the Xoloitzcuintle dog. His sculpture entered the Whitney Museum of American Art's collection and was shown in the Whitney Biennial in 1981. He is represented by Derek Eller Gallery in New York, which presented his survey exhibition 'Split Level' in 2025.