As a teenager in the early 1970s, York sculpted miniatures in wax and learned the casting process to finish them in silver and bronze herself. Her piece, ”Bridling of Pegasus” won the 1978 award from the National Sculpture Society’s annual exhibition in New York City.

In the 1980’s, Star York began meeting people near where she settled in Northern New Mexico. The connections she made, especially with Navajo, Apache, and Pueblo women were meaningful. She was touched by the women’s colorful dress, and their relationship to nature and their traditional ways. Moved by her experiences in the American Southwest, York set out on a decades-long exploration of local friendships and Native ways through her daily life and through her bronze work.

In the early 1990s, York felt intrigued by the pictographs and petroglyphs in and around northern New Mexico. At the Laguna Reservation west of Albuquerque, she experienced a rock wall drawing of an elk in velvet and immediately knew she wanted to bring the ancient image into three dimensional bronze.

“Mares of the Ice Age” and what became her entire ancient rock art series is York’s exploration of the origins of art, the origin of humankind’s impulse to create.