Artist Talks @ Bunnell: Recent Episodes
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“When I’m mindfully moving through nature my senses are alive to color, pattern, shapes, movement, flow, and contrasts. Being in nature while fully present to the experience is a spiritual and life giving experience for me. I feel more deeply connected to myself and to God….My style of painting could be described as a painterly realism. I try to reproduce the particularity of light, color and shapes but I want the energy and movement of the brushwork to still be there. That’s what gives life to a landscape in my opinion. It is my hope that my paintings would help the view to re-experience the life-giving energy of God’s creation.”
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“Salmon are iconic. They are sacred. They are keystone beings. Salmon are the thread that stitches together land and ocean, forests, wetlands and rivers of clean cold water, whales, bears, marine mammals, birds and other fish, peoples and cultures, customs and traditions, identity, and ways of life. more.
“Alutiiq cosmology is built on the belief that all things, living and inanimate are sentient and that people are equal members of a system that is built on reciprocity and kinship. My ancestors understood there is but a thin veil between the natural world and the spiritual world and deeply valued their relationship with other living beings. more.
Leslie M. Robertson –
“My altered books are rooted in mixed media and experimentation, shaped by my ongoing relationship with nature and the materials themselves. I collect found objects from the environment, recycling bins, and pieces of my own past art work. Each piece carries traces of time, memory, and transformation. The process is immersive and slow. The materials guide my decisions on what to do next and the books develop gradually through collecting, layering, and reworking. I work with elements like tree bark, leaves, encaustic wax, fabric, and stitching, building surfaces through layers of pigment, texture, and found materials. These tactile qualities invite a closer look and engagement. I hope the work encourages viewers to slow down, notice the details, and find their own sense of connection—to the materials, to place, and to their own experience of being present.”
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Katelin Hiller –
“I make drawings that regard the environment as a living shrine. They are made from mixed materials applied in many layers onto boards from white spruce trees that grew near where I live. The trees had a life before I made drawings on them, they contributed to the atmosphere and everything here. I view, touch, inhale, and ingest the boreal forest so it can express itself through my eyes and hands. I do this so you can be present among it too, imagining its current condition and future characteristics. In this body of work, I point mainly at green-hued life and a single wooded setting, but a closer look unveils variances: red, blue, yellow, overlapped vantage points, and hybridized horizons.”
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Debra Lowney –
“I am a self taught wood sculptor who strives to create innovative art that inspires, intrigues, and challenges the viewer. I’m drawn to landscapes with a focus on drawing attention to the environmental changes taking place and hopefully tempt the viewer to contemplate this change. Wood, and its vulnerability in landscapes are a bit of a metaphor for environmental change. The majority of the wood in these pieces have been harvested from fallen trees, then transformed into an image, in essence given an opportunity to continue on by highlighting changes occurring in our environments.”
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“For more than a decade, drawing has been central to my artistic practice. Working with pencil and black ink, I build dense structures of lines that gradually form fragments of coniferous branches. The process itself is essential to my work and often takes on a meditative quality, unfolding through repetition, rhythm, and sustained attention. Nature holds a particular significance for me as a constant source of inspiration. The recurring motif of coniferous branches originates in the landscape of my home environment, where such trees are abundant. In my work, this natural form becomes a universal structure through which broader reflections on life, perception, and the many forms emerging from nature are revealed.”
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This body of work takes place locally in the landscapes of the Kachemak Bay area, among the plants and animals we share space with. It contains many of the ideas and themes I continue to explore in my art: Relationships to nature, community, and self, appreciation of the ordinary and the beauty found anywhere, acknowledgment of anxieties, sorrows, and unknowns, expressions of holding and being held. Also included is playfulness and curiosity as I followed what most excited me creatively. I let myself embrace eclectic concepts and imagery with trust that the work would fit together through pattern, color, and possibility of evocation. I often approach painting like collage, pulling observational and imagined images together with the question of how they relate. This exhibit offers a question that comes to mind almost daily–what color blue–on horizon, on cloud bottom, on coffee mug, water jug, on the palette. Blue is open to interpretation, an invitation to notice.
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“I discovered the book “Alaskan Igloo Tales” (c. 1974, illustrations by G. Agupuk) years ago while working in Nome, AK’s Indian Education Art and Culture Program. At that time, the stories in this book felt strange and distant from modern Native culture and experience.
My self-studies in myth, history, Native cultures, and spirituality renewed my interest in the fascinating and inspiring stories in “Alaskan Igloo Tales.” I’ve chosen to visually reinterpret the book’s Inupiaq-identifying stories based on my new understanding, gained through studying Joseph Campbell’s mythic language and symbols.
This project started with two residencies at IAIA in Santa Fe and continued with a residency at Makotaay Art Village in Taiwan. I’ve illustrated all thirty stories in watercolor. These watercolor sketches serve as composition and color studies for moku hanga, a Japanese woodblock-style printmaking process.” learn more.
Just Listen
“I’ve come to believe in the river, where we are most aligned with flow. Responding to each turn and turbulence with a measure of calm. It requires space for attention. It requires listening.
This selection of works is the result of listening. Of guided intuition. The works have differing origins. For some, it began with first light skipping across the snow. Or it was pangs of distant connection, or the immediacy of a bond. Others evade my certainty. They all shift and defy their inception. To define their relationship would limit their potential, and the moment is wildly full of potential. Stand in the water, in the snow. Just listen.”
“I remember the first summer I noticed the trees shriveling, turning grey, eaten from the inside out. The air was hot and the rain never came. The swing tree and the joy it brought, lives now only in my mind. more.
An installation and studio artist from Fairbanks, Tamara Wilson exhibits “Street Lamp” for the month of December at Bunnell Street Arts Center. The exhibit opens on first Friday, December 5th from 5-7pm with an artist talk at 6pm.
Artist Statement:
“Creatures created from a place of wonder, wander, joy, and grief. As my work shifts away from deciphering my curiosity of domestic space, I have become increasingly fixed on what slash who occupies these spaces. Manifested from a love for lamps, many of these artworks have literally and inspirationally evolved from the table lamp."
https://www.bunnellarts.org/tamara-wilson-exhibit-december-2025/
This year’s exhibit represents 137 works by 68 artist members from Alaska and beyond. Professional development through annual exhibition opportunities is heart-centered Mission work. Thank you to the new and renewing artist members of this year! more
“As I engage with the variety of communities across Alaska through my craft as a weaver I hope to share this knowledge, joy and passion through a series of weaving demonstrations, speaking engagements as well as weaving workshops. It’s my hope.. to engage with the community by sharing my art and craft in as many ways as possible.” – Laine Rinehart
“Raven Stole the Stars, Raven Stole My Heart is a collection of prints that I have created through my process of self reflection and growth. I am Denaakk’e Koyukon Athabaskan and Lingít, more specifically Raven/ Dog Salmon clan or sukteeneidí. My show title reflects a well known Tlingit story about Raven stealing the sun; in the context of Raven stealing my heart, it is meant to represent myself and my own agency in regards to the choices I make and associated consequences.” – Ethan Kayaaní Lauesen
“Mountains of bare rock, like those on the north side of the Brooks Range, interest me, since devoid of trees, the mountains show their geological journey. In my paintings I always have tried to be true to the land’s geological story, showing the layers and shapes of rocks as they exist today. But the geological history—dating of layers, push of plates, classifying of rocks and minerals—is too linear an understanding and does not capture the experience of sitting before a mountain and looking. All time feels present when silently looking at a mountain; all past and all future become one in the moment." more...
“My work embodies playfulness, communicating meaning through perspective and relationships. Inspired by interconnected environments and organisms, my pieces reveal stories through interaction—a decoration under a handle, inside a vessel, or clues on the bottom. My functional vessels encourage use, echoing a message of reciprocity with nature: care for it, and it will nourish us." more
“There are many things that I am inspired by: old New England tobacco barns, the color of honey, glacial ice, Sung Dynasty pottery, Native Alaskan ivory bird carvings, children’s book illustrators such as Harrison Cady, Tasha Tudor and Jerry Pinkney, Danish furniture, cooking, dodo birds, redpolls, the work of French automobile body designers the 1930s and 40s such as Gabriel Voisin and Jacques Soutchik.…. As I am working in the studio, my interests blend together and emerge within the world of functional objects. Simple and clear statements that speak of my desire to tell a story that will somehow stir the souls of others.” more.
“In the past year, I have moved between two vastly different environments – a woodworking fellowship in urban Philadelphia and my home studio outside of Fairbanks – and been imprinted with their unique visual energies and abundant sound. Recent pieces convey the shaking of elevated trains, the buzz of insects and heat rising from a weed-infested ditch, urban demolition and construction, endless traffic and the places where nature breaks through human control. I’ve applied the same attention to action and noise in a more familiar Alaskan setting – water and ice surge down a creek, the backup alarm for heavy equipment at a nearby mine duets with a woodpecker, dogs’ voices split the cold, the downtown power plant and rail yard trade off in conversation, trees crack and fall in a windstorm. more...
“My pottery is made to be used and enjoyed in the home, and each piece is deeply inspired by the natural world. My love for nature began in my adolescence, working at a local Michigan nature preserve—a formative experience that continues to shape my creative vision. To this day, I spend countless hours observing animals, studying plants, and exploring geology, drawing endless inspiration from the living landscapes around me. Using my passion for carving and drawing, I strive to capture the essence of these natural inspirations in my surface decorations. Every image is hand-carved, then thoughtfully combined with glazes chosen to complement and enhance the carving. The result is pottery that not only serves a functional purpose but also tells a visual story of the places I live and explore.” more
"My paintings reflect the tenacity of an Alaskan summer, autumn’s brilliant demise, winter’s seemingly impossible unraveling, and the amazements of spring. This body of work emphasizes the endless details, changing seasons, and everyday beauty here in the North.” more.
“My creativity and life stories are expressed with coastal marine themes that capture the wild beauty of my home, Alaska. Encaustic is my material of choice – a blend of beeswax, damar crystals and pigment – often using charts, scraps of paper and found objects that are embedded in the wax medium. I draw upon first-hand experiences of fishing, its dangers and excitement." more.
“Every time I pick up a limpet shell I marvel at its compact form with its subtle shifting curves and endless variety of striations and ribs. Their color, pattern and textures layered in an inimitable way that strains my greedy eyes. I love to pinch them out of clay and this activity brings me great pleasure. The barnacle on the other hand populates surfaces with a multitude of jagged and clustered forms. Duplex, quadraplex, high rise insanity their variation of sizes clustered together suggest family or village. These toothy forms offer me the opportunity to recklessly claw and scrape the clay surface into a satisfying jumble of planes.” more
A guided conversation with Megan Murphy and collaborators Ilarion (Kuuyux) Merculieff and Brianna Lee, for the book release of The Inner Garden.
About the book: The Inner Garden is a channeled guidebook and vividly-illustrated card deck that offers a personalized map to learn more about yourself and your gifts so that you can navigate and address your particular needs with confidence for the rest of your life. The guidance within the book can enable you to align your own rhythm to that of Mother Earth’s seasons; determine your own unique physical, emotional, and spiritual constitution; and support you in developing and practicing heart-centered living. more
www.backyardbeauty.net
"When I received the invitation from Megan Murphy to collaborate on creating the images for this book, "The Inner Garden," I was both honored and nervous to accept the offer. As a working mother, artmaking had become less and less a priority in my life. Simultaneously, I began to feel like I was losing my artist identity and felt shame, even embarrassment, when referring to myself as an artist. Megan’s invitation to collaborate on this project has helped me remember and realize the importance of nurturing the artist within.” more
“The space we knew as our subsistence camp near Nome, Alaska, has been altered by climate change and was washed away by Typhoon Merbok. This work connects past, present, and future Inupiat and records our stories from fish camp, recording what climate change hasn’t erased – our ties to each other and the memories of place.” more...
Sean Derry spent the past two summers on the southside of Kachemak Bay carefully deconstructing a homesteading cabin dating from Alaska’s statehood. He has transformed the artifacts and materials from the cabin into a new collection of artworks. Sean hopes the project promotes a form of migration that lacks the injuries of colonization. “Key to this ideal is accepting the knowledge already present in a location and remaining mindful of how one’s presence alters the identity of a place. I hope that erasure of the cabin can exist as both an open investigation and an apology.” more.
Peat is a substance of slow growth and deep time. The soggy layers of rich soil hold thousands of years of frog songs, moose tracks and the subtle work of sedge and moss that draw carbon from the air and lay it down in blankets of spongy earth. On behalf of the wild nature that flourishes in these special wetlands, I am exploring an emerging side of my artistic voice, expanding my science illustration into a realm of impression and imagination. more...
From the “Panda Mick’s” universe, we follow the new adventures of the recent jackpot lottery winner, 97-year old Aelon Funk, the self-proclaimed “billionaire space boi.” Aelon is breaking in his “new-to-him” spaceship while he embarks into outer space, hoping to find the fountain of youth. The funk-filled spaceship and incredible life stories deliver energy to all he meets. The “Panda Mick’s” universe is a family of small, plush, muppet-like characters born out of isolation during the pandemic and created by Abigail Kokai. more
“In Memory of…” offers space for reflection and to honor the people, places and experiences that shape us. The theme invites expression of grief and loss, as well as of joy and love. Variations and interpretations might include retablos, paintings, altars, constructions, mementos mori, or other works. more...
“Being creative is extremely important to me. It’s my passion, my life’s work and how I contribute to my community. The images, subjects and narratives in my art stitch together my experiences of family, music, pottery, agriculture and love as a stay-at-home father of two and a part-time farmer. I also play music on a regular basis. My hope is that my work communicates my passions and inspires others to create from their own experiences." more.
Tune In: Homer” is an audio soundscape featuring voices of people and place in Homer created by sound artist Andrew O’Connor, from Toronto, Canada.
O’Connor created this audio installation from soundscapes and interviews he captured while artist-in-residence at Bunnell Street Arts Center during the month of April 2024. The audio installation is four unique audio loops transmitted from stations located around Old Town, Homer. Anyone can experience this installation by listening to a transistor radio set to 98.1 FM and walking slowly through the neighborhood between Bunnell Street Arts Center, Two Sisters, Islands and Ocean Visitors Center, Bishops Beach, and The Driftwood Inn or on roads, trails and Bishop’s Beach. The transmission comes through more clearly when you pause. Sit at a picnic table, a rock, a bench or a beach log on any of these routes. At times you will experience two transmissions as you move from one transmitter to the next. Borrow a handheld transistor radio from Bunnell Street Arts Center set to 98.1 FM and tune in!
Learn more here.
“Clouds mediate between earth and atmosphere, imagination and make-believe. We study clouds to gauge the amount and distribution of moisture, the atmospheric stability present at a given place and time, the type of convection that is occurring, or what changes in the weather are coming. more...
“When I’m mindfully moving through nature my senses are alive to color, pattern, shapes, movement, flow, and contrasts. Being in nature while fully present to the experience is a spiritual and life giving experience for me. I feel more deeply connected to myself and to God….My style of painting could be described as a painterly realism. more
“In Alaska we are surrounded by abundance. For over ten thousand years, Indigenous people have inhabited these lands, caring for the wild resources that surround us so that they in turn will sustain our communities. Knowing how to make use of local resources was and is a way of surviving and being in good relation to this place. This is a way of being that has been maintained over time through subsistence cycles and place-based practices that are contingent upon taking good care of the resources that surround us. This is our way of living.
Learn more here.
“I believe in the importance of hand-made objects in an increasingly disposable world. Contemporary issues associated with waste, commercial manufacturing and consequential practices such as repurposing, recycling, and the DIY movement influence my work. Embellished with the suggestion of mending, my vessels commemorate the endangered art of repair. Working in clay, I explore the spaces that exist between maker and user, disposable and reusable, sentimental and material value. Through experiencing a handcrafted object, I urge my audience to consider the cost of a throwaway culture and the significance of the items we keep in our lives. more
In the process of creating this show, my efforts and explorations with composition on the heated plate have led me to variations in technique, including the addition of hand-carved printing blocks inspired by a recent trip to Ireland. My family roots are deeply embedded in the history of the landscape there, shifting my work from above to below, and back again.” – Kathy Smith more
Wayfinding is a collection of hand-crafted books and box constructions which look both backward and forward in expressions of grief, hope, and gratitude. They all reflect a personal interaction with materials – the beauty of tanned salmon skin, a perfectly formed rock found on a beach walk, a unique flitch of boreal birch, or a quirky object found in a junk store – each takes me by the hand and leads its own transformation into an artist book or box construction.” – Margo Klass more...
“This body of work draws inspiration from changes I have seen take place over many years living in Alaska. Many of them are visible and accelerated due to global warming, which deeply concerns me. I have been actively involved with the In Time of Change program for the past 12 years, studying with scientists to understand their research and what it means for our natural world. I strive to convey, in a very personal way, what I have come to know.” – Ree Nancarrow more...
“My aim is to create a work for multiple low watt FM transmitters set up along the streets of Homer. My time will be spent engaging the local community in interviews and recording the soundscapes of the city at all times of the day and night..." more
”Honoring tradition and seeking innovation, I strive to push the quilt form into new territory. With a firm foundation in traditional textiles, and an art and design background, I am inspired to use my technical skills and creative drive to invent new ways to express my ideas in cloth. In many ways, I have pushed myself to ‘think outside the block’ with both concept and technique.” Learn more.
Ceramicist Kendra Harvey exhibits at Bunnell Street Arts Center for the month of March. The exhibit opens on Friday, March 1, 2024 from 5-7pm with an artist talk at 6pm. Harvey will also host two plate painting workshops for Bunnell’s 30th Annual Plate Project.
“Storytelling is the foundation of my art. Throughout time and across cultures, mythologies have been formed out of our everyday lives. These shared narratives illuminate human nature, provide comfort, and foster connection. Reinforcing this connection is the core of my work. I want to capture the feeling of hearing a familiar tale once again, but in a new form. Through the rich history of their imagery and symbolism, animals invite endless creative freedom. Detached from the intimately recognizable human figure, they are still relatable through their roles in our lore. I see them as vessels for the human condition, emotions, and relationships. The scenes are enhanced by color interaction that’s inspired by emotional content and the landscape around me. Placing these subjects in compositions on the wall elevates them and evokes sacred imagery. Their floating positions reinforce that they belong to a world adjacent to our own, evoking the line between reality and fantasy. My work is an investigation of pervasive queries about the human experience and world around us. How do we define ourselves in the other? Which of our unique qualities can also be universal? Is there a purpose to human imagination, and why do we filter our reality through it? Through the oldest medium on earth, storytelling, I hope to inspire the viewer to consider humanity’s progress and its future while honoring its past.”
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"
I make two kinds of art: for myself, and for other people.
The art I make for myself — paintings and mixed media pieces — come from a place of uneasiness and isolation. I dwell on worst case scenarios: violent breakups, car crashes, bloody accidents. Sometimes the lonely characters I create are silly or absurd in their nightmarish realities. I enjoy straddling the line between comedy and horror.
The art I make for other people — cards and valentines — are my light hearted, whimsical tokens of love. I cut and collage each one with the recipient in mind — a tiny altar devoted to them. I send them in homemade envelopes all across the world to friends, mentors, and sometimes strangers from the internet.
The dichotomy in my work is a reflection of my heart — full, optimistic, and willing to be broken over and over. Magically regenerating, Valentine’s Day after Valentine’s Day. I paint to put form to my angst and loneliness, and I make cards in an attempt to connect and send love in physical form." - Megan DeCino
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“Perseverance is an exhibition of multicolor intaglio etchings and other works on paper by Carol Lambert. Lambert’s images touch on common experiences, including birth, death, trust, fear, safety, threat, and conditions on planet Earth. Both cartooning and classical drawing inform her whimsical style. Her work bridges fantasy and realism as she explores her theme of resilience in the face of peril.” – Carol Lambert
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Artist Statement: “My photography focuses on telling stories, so my goal is to build a narrative from a group of images, organized in a specific order instead of aiming for visual excellence in one single image. An isolated photograph has a certain aesthetic value, but a set of photos uses the power of visual storytelling to tell a story and stories are powerful tools of communication. That is what I try to achieve as a photographer. This exhibition is about isolation, or my personal vision of my son’s isolation, his strategies to adapt to his new life, his special relationship with the sea, his particular vision of Alaska, his experience here.” – Rafael de la Uz
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Bunnell Street Arts Center welcomes multidisciplinary artist, Lydia Moyer from September 23rd – October 22rd as artist in residence. Moyer will exhibit work, share an artist talk, and offer community workshops throughout the month of October at Bunnell Street Arts Center.
Moyer says, “My work is a transpersonal response to a sense of crisis in the world. It casts the individual amidst the collective, wrestling with the overwhelming social, political, and environmental concerns that are the shadow of late capitalism, particularly as it looms in the U.S. I bear witness to these concerns alternately by conflating one with another, speaking from the past or future in order to address the present, and playing with the absurd and uncanny amidst melancholy and grief. Moving equally and sometimes seamlessly between self-created and existing materials, I hope to evoke a felt-sense of unshielded – and unheroic – awareness through image, sound, and text.”
“Taking Care” exhibit statement: How do artists express care for self, community, other life forms and the land? How do artists picture resilience, innovation, and healing? As first responders, artists lead as healers through their creations. In times of tension, crisis or distress, artists surface truth and create images of energy, vibrancy, and hope. The exhibition, “Taking Care,” aims to foster hope, spark joy, and nurture self and community resilience.
More.
Inuit artist, Lawrence “Ulaaq’’ Ahvakana, shows a variety of sculpture in stone, wood, bronze and glass as well as masks and two-dimensional works on paper.
“My inspiration is our Inuit stories, from everyday Northern Alaska lifestyle of subsistence, ceremonies, and the natural cycles of Arctic living depicted in stone, wood, bronze, glass, others including prints, paintings and drawings.” more
“In the spirit of inclusivity, I blend the spiritual symbols of Western culture with those of the Alaska Native people, elevating the culture and worldview of my ancestors. I acknowledge the duality of my heritage and invite the viewer to consider Alaska Native beliefs as equal to Western beliefs.
I present images of Alaska Native women, inspired by friends, family and fellow artists as the powerful beings I know them to be. Additionally, the land, animals and plant life take a rightful place as equals in my paintings.”
more.
For the month of June, Bunnell presents encaustic painter from Kodiak, Antoinette Walker. Exhibit opening will be on June 2nd from 5-7pm, with an artist talk at 6pm. The evening also opens the 6th Annual Community Supported Art (CSA) project and will introduce 2023 CSA artists after Antoinette’s artist talk.
“My creativity and life stories are expressed with coastal marine themes that capture the wild beauty of my home, Alaska. Encaustic is my material of choice; a blend of beeswax, damar crystals and pigment. Often using charts, scraps of paper and found objects that are embedded in the wax medium. I draw upon first-hand experiences of fishing, its dangers and excitement.”
“Eroding river banks, weathered canneries, set net sites, surfaces beaten by heavy winds and torrential seas and rustic landscapes tell a compelling story. With every year there are subtle changes and inspirations for a fresh perspective. I’m drawn to these surfaces with textural layers that disclose a story. Using encaustic, painting, scraping, and scratching, I seek to reveal pieces that speak of the past and present. For me, inspiration is often a mystery. In painting, one thing inspires while another fades away. As in the landscape, changes are absorbed and reconfigured.”
Bio:
Antoinette Walker is an encaustic painter based in Kodiak. She is known primarily for her coastal marine subjects. Encaustic painting, also known as hot wax painting, is a form of painting that involves a heated wax medium to which colored pigments have been added. Using encaustic and embedding papers, charts, fish tickets and found objects Antoinette creates pieces that reflect her love of Alaska. Born in 1953 and raised on Kodiak Island, she has studied and practiced art for most of her life. For the past twenty-three years her primary medium has been encaustic. Her work is recognized and collected throughout Alaska. It has been exhibited in the Anchorage Historical Museum and is held in the collections of the Pratt Museum in Homer, Alutiiq Museum in Kodiak, Baronov Museum in Kodiak, Kodiak Public Library, Providence Hospital, Kodiak, and Credit Union 1 in Kodiak.
The Visual Arts Exhibition program is sponsored by North Wind Home Collection, art sales, and individual donors. Thank You!
For the month of May, Bunnell presents Changing Landscapes, a group invitational exhibit featuring new work by Deb Lowney, Sharlene Cline and Kristin Link. Exhibit opening will be on May 5th from 5-7pm, artist talks at 6pm.
As human activities increase the rate at which natural processes like glacial retreat, weathering and erosion shape the landscape, what agency do artists offer as witnesses, interpreters and documentarians of disappearing landscapes? How do artists steward how we hold and express feelings about change? How might art help humans find strength, reckon with loss, and face what is revealed with courage, purpose and love? Artists featured are: Sharlene Cline, Deb Lowney and Kristin Link.
“The majority of my creative work over the past two decades has explored the subtle mechanics that inform how people connect to each other, and how people connect to place. In particular, I am fascinated in social anxiety as a disruptive, paradoxical yet also generative energy, one that both separates people as well as leading them to incredibly creative strategies of connection. In 2015, I launched a project entitled “I AM NOT PSYCHIC’—essentially a fortune-teller booth designed specifically for those who have no psychic or mystical power. Informed by my befuddlement in crowded or chaotic public spaces, the booth offered a way to invite strangers, one at a time, into rich and reciprocal conversations.”
For the month of April, multidisciplinary artist Tor Lukasik-Foss of Ontario, Canada and artist Jenny Irene Miller of Anchorage, Alaska exhibit work at Bunnell Street Arts Center.
Lukasik-Foss will present an installation booth, “I Am Not Psychic”, where he’ll take appointments and host “readings,” at Bunnell, perform music and share his creative process. Miller will exhibit photographs and host a cyanotype workshop. Both artists are Artists-in-Residence at the arts center for the month of April. Learn more about Tor and Jenny’s specific residency programming at www.bunnellarts.org.
Tor Lukasik-Foss: “The majority of my creative work over the past two decades has explored the subtle mechanics that inform how people connect to each other, and how people connect to place. In particular, I am fascinated in social anxiety as a disruptive, paradoxical yet also generative energy, one that both separates people as well as leading them to incredibly creative strategies of connection.”
Jenny Irene Miller: “I’m an artist who uses photography. My art practice is grounded in all of this: place, storytelling, Indigeneity, queerness, and familial and community relations. Photography provides a space for me to practice a form of careful observation that runs deep in the Inupiaq culture I come from. My art practice considers photography’s ability to share stories, to recall people and memories, and how it has been used as a weapon in the colonial project.”
“This is the last installment of the Dusty Funk installation series, exploring performative experience and mixed media to question the status quo, identity, gender and race, and produce both beautiful and grotesque imagery in an Afro-surreal environment. I am looking for new ways to tell stories and engage with audiences with my work. Fresh inspiration abounds. The Quixotic Queericule Quazar uses comics, poetry, prose, and large mixed media paintings to tell a short story discussing identity, addiction, and the feelings associated with giving your dreams to the void.” – David Brame
“Glaciers sing. Blueberries listen. Bodies long to/for touch. “for a moment, we exist together, for a moment” is a series of sensory-based works examining communication, systems of care, semiotic beings, grief, and the aesthetics of accessibility within art and non-art spaces. Visitors are invited to participate and engage with the work through multiple entry points as a form of reciprocity. Many pieces are informed by and made in collaboration with artists, writers, musicians, researchers, and wayfarers.” – Katie Ione Craney
Bunnell Street Art Center exhibits installation artist Hans Hallinen. Join us for the exhibit opening on November 4th from 5-7pm, artist talk at 6pm.
“Threshold” exhibits a series of objects designed in cooperation with algorithms and constructed with the support of computer-controlled tools by Anchorage-based artist, Hans Hallinen. More.
Indigenous artist Theresa Woldstad exhibits new work as Artist in Residence at Bunnell Street Arts Center for the month of October. Woldstad’s work explores the challenges of navigating legal access to resources an Indigenous artist in Alaska today.
“Allaŋŋuq elevates deep ancestral understanding of the power of wild non-human beings and the transformative power of adaptation to one’s environment.
Change is a natural element of the living world and it can occur hourly, daily, seasonally, through lifetimes and millennia. Natural beings adapt to these changes in the environment through transformations. Since time immemorial, my ancestors have studied how the wild beings of the nuna(land) here transform.” – Erin Ggaadimits Ivalu Gingrich
“I moved to Alaska in search of wilderness. Painting being an autobiographical medium, these works describe the domesticated wilderness in which I now call home.” – David Pettibone
“As a studio artist my goal is to make fabulous tableware that infuses life with purposeful beauty. As an active community member and instructor I use my unique skill set, as an artist and small business owner, to offer educational opportunities. Through clay, I create pathways to cross-pollinate communities.” – Deb Schwartzkopf
In times of pandemic, climate crisis, and ongoing assaults to human rights, how are Indigenous Alaska artists today strengthening self and community, and guiding the next generation from surviving to thriving? Protection: Adaptation and Resistance centers Indigenous ways of knowing. Working within intergenerational learning groups and as collaborators in vibrant community networks, Alaska’s Indigenous artists are invigorating traditional stories in customary arts and proposing resilient futures through design, tattoo, regalia and graphic arts. Artist projects elevate collaboration, allyship, and community as tools of resistance, adaptation, and cultural affirmation. The exhibition explores three themes: Land and Culture Protectors, Activists for Justice and Sovereignty and Resilient Futures.
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Nationally touring exhibition, Protection: Adaptation and Resistance opens at the Pratt Museum, Saturday, June 11 from 4 – 6pm, with an artist/curator talk at 5 pm.
Exhibiting artist, Amber Webb will create new work during her two-week residency from April 20-May 7. Her explorations of pictorial Yup’ik storytelling communicate contemporary stories of resilience, humor, changing climate, motherhood, historic trauma and resistance. “I will focus on a small wood carving or series of carvings based on a series of fat indigenous women. This is a continuation of exploring Yup’ik ways of making and honors the original intent of the series.”
Anchorage artist, Keren Lowell, exhibits and visits as the Homer Fiber Arts Collective’s Artist-in-Residence at Bunnell, exploring fiber arts construction techniques in a series of workshops for local artists.
Lowell uses discarded items and reinvents them using a range of techniques into three dimensional textile art. Her work explores themes including erosion and translucence. Her work is neither solely painting, sculpture nor installation and yet takes elements of all three to create powerful and emotional art that has a raw beauty, depth and intelligence. Her workshops will explore how to use flexible materials in a sculptural way.
“I think and visualize things in three dimensions, but traditional sculpture mediums (wood, metal, stone, clay) are too rigid and absolute for me. Textiles operate the way that most organic and fluid things operate. I also appreciate the way that textiles evoke our own skin. I think of textiles as visual metaphors for the human (especially the feminist/queer/curious) condition,” says Lowell.
- Chloe Bechtol: Alaska wildlife pen and ink box top drawing
- David Kaufmann: Porcelain mug
- Kelsey Hardy-Place: Linoleum lunar calendar
- Maygen Lotscher: Ceramic shell tray
- Nancy Johnson: hand painted rock
- Mandy Bernard: Silk-screen printed tea towel
CSA Members receive multiple works from local artists at a fantastic value and develop relationships with the local artists and art community. The CSA program allows a point of entry for collectors to discover new artists and explore a variety of disciplines while supporting local artists’ careers and a vibrant community.
Nathan Hall is a multidisciplinary sound and visual artist creating new work reflecting on his site-specific experience in Homer during his artist residency.
Jesse Egner is a New York-based artist working primarily with photography and video. Often taking the form of playful and absurd portraiture of himself and other individuals, his work explores themes of queerness, disidentification, queer corporeality, and the uncanny.
"The power of meeting physically in the same room has become increasingly important during the pandemic era. I am interested in roads to new communication regardless of language, socio-economic, or geographical affiliation. I do this through everyday movements and through textile materials. My exploratory work with what I call Folding Ritual is a way to communicate wordlessly and intuitively. Folding a piece of clothing together, which may carry a special story, is a way to deepen the understanding of the other and of oneself. Likewise, the Untangling Project is through the chaos and order of the thread a way to communicate in authentic movements in everyday choreography. I would like to explore these relational methods in my residence and also visit people's homes if possible under the prevailing pandemic circumstances. These meetings are documented in a filmed material and will form the basis of my artistic design in the gallery at Bunnell. I also want to find material from discarded fishing nets material from the fishing industry into a parallel spatial design with my crochet and weave in stories about how the pandemic has affected the residents of Homer." more...
Website: berithstennabb.se Berith’s residency sponsored by Alaska Community Foundation's Irma Scavenius Fund for International Understanding.
"I have been walking the trails, forests and shores of Alaska for 50 years, always in the company of a loyal dog. The sub-arctic environment has been a constant source of information and inspiration. I refer to these elements of nature, but not as illustrations. The images in my art evolve out of the practice of working daily in my studio.
My focus has been not only the expansive Northern landscape, but the patches of ground beneath my feet as well. I work in an abstract expressionist manner in painting, while my drawings are usually tighter and detailed. Both media reflect my extemporaneous and experimental approach.
I have been University trained and have studied the art in great museums of the World. I value originality though historic themes such as modernism continually permeate my decision making during the process of painting or drawing.
The struggle to improve is challenging and never ending. Each empty canvas or page is a new beginning. Inherent in the process is the danger of mis-step or failure. It’s like walking on thin ice." - Don Decker, Learn More
Artist, naturalist and adventurer Kim McNett will share nature journal pages and original works of art that describe her travels across various regions of Alaskan wilderness.
Alaska artists explore the intersection of environmental observation and nostalgia in a group show, “Sound of Wind and Grass,” featuring photographs by John Hagen, cyanotype, drawing and collage by Kristin Link and video audio art by Michael Walsh.
The intention of my work is to create contemporary Indigenous icon imagery, recover and elevate the beliefs of Alaska Native people as equal to those of the Western world. My paintings of Alaska landscapes and other subjects such as seals and ice represent the connection to the environment of the subjects in these portraits.
During the long introspective period of the pandemic lockdown, my mind wandered to landscapes visited long ago, Costa Rica, the Galapagos Islands and Chile. Some of my paintings will reflect these places. Having witnessed the pain and suffering of the most vulnerable in 2020, my work may suggest the warm embrace of refuge and care. In all my paintings, I invite the observer to quiet the mind and consider the belief that all things, living and inanimate are instilled the light of divine energy.
Biography Linda Infante Lyons is a visual artist from Anchorage, Alaska. Her family is of Alutiiq/Sugpiaq Alaska Native heritage from Kodiak Island. She earned a BA at Whitman College, WA and studied art at the Viňa del Mar Fine Arts School in Chile. She has been exhibiting her work for over 20 years.
Linda’s work can be found in permanent collections including the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH, the Anchorage Museum, the Alaska State Museum, the Alaska Contemporary Art Bank, the Alutiiq Museum and Archeological Repository, Kodiak, AK, the Museum of the North, Fairbanks, AK, and the Pratt Museum in Homer, AK.
Linda has received various awards including a 2020 Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant, a 2020 and 2017 Rasmuson Foundation Fellowship, a Santa Fe Arts Institute Fellowship and a Native Arts and Cultures National Artist Fellowship.
Linda lives in Anchorage, Alaska with her husband, British artist, Graham Dane.
Sheila Wyne presents The Strata Series. Strata are layers of rock that tell us stories—sometimes vivid and startling—of geological time. The found and manipulated signs are detritus from our built environment. Signage is a symbol of our species priorities for how to care for and direct ourselves often to the exclusion of other ecosystems.
Wyne is a visual artist based in Anchorage. Her studio work has been shown across the state, the Lower 48 and overseas. Her work is in permanent collections of the Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau and Homer Museums. She has designed over 20 public artworks.
In my work I strive to tell a story through my experiences and imagination. My creativity and life stories are expressed with coastal marine themes that capture the wild beauty of my home, Alaska.
The medium of encaustic is my material of choice; a blend of molten beeswax, damar crystals, and pigment.
The inspirations for these paintings are weathered canneries, set net sites, and fishermen working their gear. My first hand experiences with the dangers and excitement of fishing draw me to the historical Bristol Bay. Here, ghosts of past storms emerge through the fog. From a 32-foot wooden sailboat without navigational equipment, to the eroding river banks, dilapidating canneries, all surfaces are beaten by heavy winds and torrential seas, developing the rustic landscapes I find beautiful and tell a compelling story.
I live in a coastal community where the natural elements of wind and salt are constantly altering the environment. With every year there are subtle changes and inspirations for a fresh perspective.
I’m drawn to these surfaces with textural layers that disclose a story of the lives they had. Using encaustic, painting, scraping, and scratching, I seek to reveal pieces that speak of the past and the present. For me, inspiration is often a mystery. One thing inspires while another fades away, the ideas warp and changes are absorbed and lost, as in the landscapes with eroding edge.
Dasha Kelly Hamilton is a writer, performance artist and creative change agent, applying the creative process to facilitate dialogues around human and social wellness. She is the author of two novels, three poetry collections, four spoken word albums, and one collection of personal vignettes. She has taught at colleges, conferences, and classrooms and curated fellowships for emerging leaders. An Arts Envoy for the U.S. Embassy, Dasha has facilitated community-building initiatives in Botswana, Toronto, Mauritius, and Beirut. Her touring production, Makin’ Cake, uniquely engages communities in a forward dialogue on race, class, and equity. Dasha is a national Rubinger Fellow and, concurrently, Poet Laureate for the City of Milwaukee and the State of Wisconsin.
How can land acknowledgment spark other ways of knowing, being and listening into action? Board members of Bunnell and artists, Argent Kvasnikoff of Ninilchik Village Tribe, and Thorey Munro from Homer, discuss the significance of language, materials, space and time in land acknowledgment. more.
Drawing from mythology, folktales, memories, and personal experience she creates narratives and characters that aim to make some sense of our existence by giving form to our collective anxieties and desires. Enthralled by the emotive power and depth of expression achieved through puppetry and storytelling, she believes that within these realms lies a source of real-life magic that is deficient in much of our daily lives. more.
What is the value and purpose of writing alternative histories of Alaska? What responsibilities does a person who operates from a distance have to a culture?
Shared Universe Bookclub discusses cultural appropriation. With Nathan Shafer, Richard Perry, Lucas Rowley, Leslie Kimiko Ward, Vivian Faith Prescott, Jaclyn Bergamino & Patrick Lichty. more.
How are international artists-in-residence managing pandemic, distance and dialogue? Fiber artists Berith Stennab (Skövde, Sweden) and Mandy Bernard (Homer, Alaska) discuss their intercontinental collaboration of shared communication and textiles.
Stennab and Bernard are participants in a residency exchange between Bunnell Street Arts Center and Skövde Museum sponsored by the Alaska Community Foundation’s Irma Scavenius Fund for International Understanding. Curators Tomas Gustafsson and Mette Muhli from Skovde Museum join us for this conversation. more.
Sara Tabbert – Signs of Life
"Certainly I am but one of many artists whose lives were completely rearranged by the ongoing pandemic. Of all the things that were supposed to happen in the last 12 months, this exhibit at Bunnell is the only event on my calendar that wasn’t postponed or canceled.
This collection of recent work reflects my continued interest in the less celebrated landscapes of Alaska — what we do in them and what we (as well as what our animal and insect neighbors) leave behind." more.
Nina Elder, February 2021 artist in residence at Bunnell Street Arts Center, discusses her fascination with fraying materials, lines, tension, release and mending with artist Billy Joe Miller. Both will share images and discuss their work. Elder has been collecting and drawing frayed rope in Homer. Elder and Miller have made work out of ropes together in Gustavus, Alaska. Miller has made art out of rope waste at the Tides Institute in Maine. But more than the ropes themselves, Elder is fascinated by Miller's acumen with the cycle of life, as an artist and a shepherd for the dying. "As I was conceiving of It Will Not Be The Same, But It Might Be Beautiful, his perspective really influenced me. That there is something gorgeous after the breaking. He also does exceptional work in communities, and it is no coincidence that my art practice grew into public collaboration after traveling for a month with Billy Joe on the Alaska Ferry." more.
Artist Holly Mititquq Nordlum speaks about cultural resistance and revitalization through her present projects including public art, acknowledgment through art, film and traditional tattoos. more.
With NPN’s support, Nina is developing It Will Not Be The Same, But It Might Be Beautiful. This multimedia project poetically explores how humans are implicated in the Anthropocene and are also tasked with moving towards a more holistic future. Through video installation and large-scale drawing, this investigation of change focuses on objects that have been exhausted by use and transformed by time. more.
This conversation features owner/curator Simonetta Mignano of Bivy, Anchorage artspace and bookstore as she speaks with Hollis Mickey, Susan Share and Ben Huff about their art and the mission of this bookstore and home of The School of Nonfunctional Studies. more.
During this residency David developed a mixed media show that further develops Dusty Funk and the lexicon of Afrofuturism. David says, "I maintain an active scholarly engagement. Dusty Funk is a series of mixed media Art Experiences that include 3 phases. Dusty Funk Psychedelic Afro Future Space Opera an evolving set of dynamic illustrations. Dusty Funk and the Wooly Whayl a tragic and surreal comic it follows the narrative path that a standard 5 act opera entails. That includes an overture, aria and three intermissions between the 2nd, 3rd and 4th acts. This makes for a total of 10 'chapters'. Dusty Funk is 400-460 pages and can be expanded into more volumes. Lastly Dusty Funk and The Cosmic Creation Comatorium a collection of installation and performance pieces." more.
How do artists and writers share truthful stories about fictions staged in Alaska? American physician and explorer, Frederick Cook claimed to have discovered the North Pole in 1908. But who was “discovered" and what was suppressed in this story? What are doctrines of discovery and what role do Alaska artists and writers and arts organizations today play in resisting colonialism through the works we create and promote? How might the work of artists today in exposing doctrines of discovery play into rising social justice movement particularly in Alaska? more.
Reimagining the Arctic and Alternative histories of Alaska. Nathan Shafer discusses Dirigibles of Denali, an augmented reality app/interactive print project that reimagines three domed cities that were planned, but never built in Alaska: Seward’s Success, Denali City and Arctic Town. more.
What does it mean to create new music with respect for Indigenous cultures, stories and experiences? Found Sound Nation's Christopher Marianetti and Joe Bergen discuss their new project, Beringia, with Wild Shore New Music's Katie Cox and Angie Tanning. more.
Emily Johnson, Yup''ik multi-disciplinary artist raised in Soldotna, now based in NYC, connects with her Alaska audience about her current multidisciplinary project, Being Future Being, and how it has shaped her work in systemic change, Creating New Futures land acknowledgment and social architecture. Link to video: https://youtu.be/_QLs1fGKF4o
more.
Christian Freet and Myesha Callahan Freet are conceptual artists and collaborators focused on self, personal and social contexts, and questions surrounding the nature of reality in photography, literature, video, sculpture, and light. They live in Chugiak. more.
Tlingit and Athabascan artist Rico Lanáat’ Worl designed a new postage stamp to be released in 2021 for the United States Postal Service, inspired by a traditional Indigenous tale. more.
Anchorage artist Sheila Wyne explores “Three Seasons,” an ongoing series that explores art, alchemy and anthropecene. more.
How can we create stories from the most authentic representation? What does it mean to reimage modern storytelling with Indigenous authority, Elder and youth contributions, and our own cultural competencies?
Singing for Strength: How Indigenous language, stories and songs enrich identity and community this week on Inspiration and Adaptation with David Engles, songmaker and language leader of Lower Tanana Denakenaga’ more.
How can we create stories from the most authentic representation? What does it mean to reimage modern storytelling with Indigenous authority, Elder and youth contributions, and our own cultural competencies?
Shared Universe is a group of Alaskan artists, writers and knowledge-bearers who seek feedback from readers about their efforts to create, promote and distribute exciting comic book stories/new media/fashion exemplifying the rich regional cultures of Alaska in ways that both honor the heritage and forge new concepts to bridge the past with the future. more.
David Brame describes himself as proudly Blackity Black, an afrofuturist and scholar. His most recent scholarly creative accomplishments for 2019 and 2020 include Sanford Biggers: CODESWITCH in collaboration with Professor John Jennings, The Bronx Museum and produced by Yale University Press. His scholarly work for young black youth, The Struggle, was produced by Minnesota Press. His forthcoming graphic novel After the Rain, disseminated by ABRAMS/Megascope, adapts Nnedi Okorafor’s short story “On the Road.” more.
Karen Stomberg: "I am very conscious of the preciousness of our world and the efforts made by science to protect, preserve and document each piece of it. So, though this work began with drawing the beauty of iconic wildflowers, it deepened as I considered their twin qualities of fragility and resilience."
Elissa Pettibone: "For this exhibition, I have developed a series of colors derived from Alaskan plants within the Kenai Peninsula region to create large scale swatches and a color library depicting the results of over 50 experiments." more.
Christine Byl is the author of Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods, a book about trail crews, tools, wildness, gender, and labor. Sara Tabbert is a printmaker and mixed media artist from Fairbanks, Alaska. more.
How is Sweden adapting and interpreting the pandemic in artistic practice? Swedish curators Tomas Gustafsson and Mette Muhli and artist Berith Stennabb share their activities. In the summer of 2019, Gustafsson and Muhli visited Bunnell Street Arts Center to promote a residency for an Alaska artist at Skövde Kulturhus Kostmuseet in Sweden. more.
Lily Hope was born and raised in Juneau, Alaska to full-time artists. She is Tlingit Indian, of the Raven moiety. Following her matrilineal line, she’s of her grandmother’s clan, the T’akdeintaan, originating from the Snail House in Hoonah, Alaska. She lives in Juneau, Alaska, with her husband, author Ishmael Hope, and five children. more.
Talking with the artists from our October exhibit- Fragile Domestic.
We are driven by questions around the fragility of materials and time-based craft, the fragility of unsustainable perfection, the fragility of memory, history and utility. The resulting instinct sloughs all this to reveal a harder, less breakable core. This, we nurture and feed. more.
With support from the Alaska Community Foundation's Irma Scavenius Fund for International Understanding, we look forward to bringing Nigerian muralists Yomi Awobusuyi and Kelsen Nnaji to Homer in 2021. On this podcast we'll meet these artists and their leader, Enzenwa Okora from Streetproject Foundation, in Lagos. more.
We are driven by questions around the fragility of materials and time-based craft, the fragility of unsustainable perfection, the fragility of memory, history and utility. The resulting instinct sloughs all this to reveal a harder, less breakable core. This, we nurture and feed. more.
How can we create stories from the most authentic representation? What does it mean to re-imagine modern storytelling with Indigenous authority, Elder and youth contributions, and our own cultural competencies? Shared Universe is a group of Alaskan artists, writers and knowledge-bearers who seek feedback from readers about their efforts to create, promote and distribute exciting comic book stories/new media/fashion exemplifying the rich regional cultures of Alaska in ways that both honor the heritage and forge new concepts to bridge the past with the future. more.
After earning her MFA from the Rainier Writer’s Workshop Erin Coughlin Hollowell authored three books of poetry. She is a Rasmuson Foundation Fellows and In 2017, she was awarded a second Rasmuson Fellowship to work on her third book. Currently, Hollowell is the executive director of the Storyknife Writers Residency, a residency for women writers being developed outside of Homer, Alaska and she is Director of the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference.
Kesler “Kes” Woodward is an Alaska artist, art historian and curator known for his colorful paintings of northern landscapes. After teaching for and then chairing the Art Department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks since 1981, Woodward retired as Professor in 2000 to paint full-time, receiving emeritus status from the university. He was awarded the first Alaska Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts in 2004. more.
Hal Gage- (black & white photography of glacial silt) Patterns in the flowing mud and silt are the vanishing fingerprint of the glacier. These transitory images are all that is left as the ice disappears and the waters dry up—leaving just a hint of the glacier that once was.
Rika Mouw- (mussel shell assemblages) Through these mussel shell assemblages I reflect on the time I’ve spent on this edge of land where it meets the sea with the ebbs and flows of the tide. more.
How can the names of this area be mapped more inclusively? With Bretwood Higman, Sally Ash and Argent Kvasnikoff. more.
Continuing our conversations with Indigenous artist, activist and curator Melissa Shaginoff, this week we discuss the sign painting workshop she led last month. Participants share how it feels and what inspires them to visibly honor the legacy of Indigenous stewardship on signs placed around Homer. more.
Skywalker Payne’s work embraces her experience as a professional oral storyteller, performance artist, author, poet, nurse, and healer. She is leading a new workshop model called R.A.C.E.S. (Race A Concept Explored in Story Circle). Built upon her storytelling experience, knowledge of Black history and racism, Skywalker found storytelling an effective method to communicate difficult feelings and experiences. The goal is to establish R.A.C.E.S. Circle as a model to enable anyone to rise above limiting racial concepts. This tool can be used in businesses or organizations to explore race in a non-threatening, non-judgemental, empathetic space. Bunnell's board and staff participated in a R.A.C.E.S workshop last month and and some will be joining us on Zoom for our conversation. more.
Born in New Zealand, Sheryl Maree Reily lives in the small mining town of Ester. The gravity of the global situation prompted her to transform her creative practice as a self- taught photographer and healthcare professional into an arts-based advocacy for human and environmental wellbeing. Her work draws upon an expanded field of sculpture, performance, installation, and media technology. Reily has received three Rasmuson Foundation individual artist awards, Helene Wurlitzer Foundation and Santa Fe Art Institute Fellowships, and serves on the Alaska State Council for the Arts Visual Arts Committee, and with the Emily Tremaine Foundation's Artists Thrive platform.
Artist and researcher Nina Elder creates projects that reveal humanity’s dependence on, and interruption of, the natural world. With a focus on changing cultures and ecologies, Nina advocates for collaboration, fostering relationships between institutions, artists, scientists and diverse communities. She lectures as a visiting artist/scholar at universities, develops publicly engaged programs, and consults with organizations that seek to grow through interdisciplinary programming. Nina’s artwork is widely exhibited and has been featured in Art in America, VICE Magazine, and on PBS. She is based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. more.
Scott McDonald an artist, an art educator, and a lifetime resident of Alaska. He teaches K-6 art for Anchorage School District as well as an active studio practice in both Homer and Anchorage.
Anvil Catlin Williamson was born and raised in Spokane, WA but has been a permanent resident of Fairbanks, Alaska since 2008. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from The University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2016 and has been a full-time artist since 2017.
Sheila Wyne is a visual artist based in Anchorage. Her studio work has been shown across the state, the Lower 48 and overseas. Her work is in permanent collections of several Alaska museums, and she has designed over 20 public artworks.
Michael Conti is a photographer, filmmaker and printmaker living and working on the land of the Dena’ina people in Anchorage Alaska. He is also a professor of photography at the University of Alaska Anchorage. more.
Steven Godfrey is a potter and a Professor of Ceramics at the University of Alaska Anchorage. His current work is less about being tailored for a specific utilitarian function but rather to illustrate a collection of his interests, combined during the making process and meant to speak beyond functionality and tell a story through the symbolism of form and color. The forms he makes emulate the elegance of French automobile bodies made during the 1930s and 40s: Delage, Delahaye, Talbot-Lago, Bugatti, Avions Voison, etc. Other aspects of his work subtly or directly depict his interest in old New England tobacco barns, Native Alaskan ivory bird carvings, children’s book illustrations, Danish furniture, magpies, architecture.” He lives in Anchorage. more
“Nature has always been the thread that sews my paintings together. Instead of being a part of nature, we see ourselves as existing in tandem with it: separate but together. This is, of course, an illusion. The complexities of our relationship with nature are infinite and they run the gamut from peaceful to the sublime and from pleasant to the horrifying. My work explores the many levels of our relationship with nature and seeks to convey the visceral emotions that come about when we are reminded of just how connected to our environment we truly are.” David lives in Homer. more
Steven Gordon is an Anchorage artist painting the landscape of south central Alaska for the past 35 years in a painterly realist style. He went to Dartmouth college and then earned this MFA from the university of Iowa in 1984 and headed up to Alaska to start his adventures with the life and land of Alaska. He’s taught at UAA and APU and had done numerous painting workshops, and artist-in-the-school residencies across the state. His work can be seen in many private, public and corporate collections.
Anvil Catlin Williamson was born and raised in Spokane, WA but has been a permanent resident of Fairbanks, Alaska since 2008. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from The University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2016 and has been a full-time artist since 2017. Utilizing animal imagery combined with non-organic components, Anvil’s ceramic and mixed-media sculptures explore the roles of suffering and empathy in the individual life. This current body of work entitled “Shelter” delves into our human need for safety as well as community. All of us have recently experienced changes in how we relate to our physical and emotional shelters in the shadow of current events. The subjects you see represent individuals struggling to find or provide shelter amidst the various forms of isolation that often come with it. more.
Melissa Shaginoff (Ahtna, Piaute) discusses an ephemeral land marking project, “Acknowledgement in Action.” Original place names, art, language and science intersect. She was joined by special guests Sally Ash, Sugt’estun language teacher in Nanwalek and Syverine Bentz, the Kachemak Bay Research Reserve’s Education Coordinator. more
Joel Isaak's family is from the village of Ch’aghałnikt (Point Possession) and currently lives in Soldotna. His Dena’ina name, Łiq’a yes, translates to salmon skin which relates to his pursuits of learning fish skin sewing. Joel is an artist, educator and lifelong learner. He uses art to uncover understanding of working in an educational environment where he combines the Western education model with traditional Alaska Native ways of life. Language work inspires Joel’s artistic practice and education methodology. He uses multi-cultural communication as a medium to aid in language revitalization. Art has served as a safeguard for him and a medium for generating understanding and communicating hard truths to a wide range of audiences to help facilitate wellness.
We also welcomed special guest Ruth Miller to this conversation. Ruth Miller is a Dena’ina Athabaskan woman who was born and raised in Alaska and currently lives in Anchorage. Her family on her maternal side is from the village of Ekuk in Bristol Bay. She claims Russian Jewish heritage from her Father’s side. She is a climate activist, Indigenous rights advocate, traditional beadwork artist, storyteller, and singer. She is also on the path of becoming a traditional healer. She is a recent graduate of Brown University and received a BA in Critical Development Studies with a focus on Indigenous resistance and liberation. She believes that the true liberation of Indigenous peoples must begin with a deep spiritual foundation in the wisdom of the ancestors, and knowledge of how to live in harmony and respect with the lands, waters, plants, and animal relatives. This means honoring the power of cultural bonds, the strength of healthy communities, and the beauty of Indigenous lifeways and artforms. (Bio from https://sustainus.org/people/ruth-miller/). more.
A conversation about a community process of education and transparency in decision-making about land acknowledgement, Asia hosts civic leaders and artist, Argent Kvasnikoff for an open dialogue about marking Tuggeht as Indigenous land with Ivan Encelewsk (CEO, Ninilchik Village Tribe) Donna Aderhold (Homer City Council) Marianne Aplin (US Fish and Wildlife, Islands and Ocean Visitors Center) Matt Steffy (Homer Parks Maintenance Coordinator), Julie Engebretsen (Homer Planning Department), Deb Lowney (PARC Committee) and Robert Archibald (PARC Committee), Rika Mouw (Landscape Architect). more.
Features guests Emily Johnson and Amber Webb. This conversation will be centered around learning about land acknowledgement
Amber Webb is an artist & activist from Dillingham, Alaska of Yup’ik and Unangan heritage. She received a Rasmuson Individual Artist Award and a Project Award. Amber explores pictorial Yup’ik storytelling to tell contemporary stories of oppression and resilience.
Emily Johnson is an artist who makes body-based work. A Bessie Award-winning choreographer and a 2015 Guggenheim fellow in choreography, she is based in New York. Raised in Soldotna, Alaska, she is of Yup’ik descent. more.
Born in Fairbanks, Alaska to a Tlingit/N’ishga Mother and Hippy/American father, Da-ka-xeen Mehner uses the tools of family ancestry and personal history to build his art. his work stems from an examination of a multicultural heritage and social expectations and definitions. In particular his work has focused on the constructs of Native American identity, and an attempt to define the Self outside of these constructs. Mehner has received a number of awards for his work including a 2015 USA Rasmuson fellowship, a 2015 Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship, and a 2014 Native Arts and Culture Foundation Artist Fellowship.
Melissa Shaginoff is part of the Udzisyu (caribou) and Cui Ui Ticutta (fish-eater) clans from Nay’dini’aa Na Kayax (Chickaloon Village). Melissa is an Ahtna and Paiute person, an artist, a social activist and currently the curator of Alaska Pacific University’s Art Galleries. Within her current curatorial work, Melissa has focused intently on potlatching. She believes that the only future in which institutions embody Indigenous ideologies is one that publicly recognizes its power, and autonomously gives it away. Melissa has participated the Island Mountain Arts Toni Onley Artist Project in Wells, British Columbia as well as the Sheldon Jackson Museum Artist Residency in Sitka, Alaska. She has been published in First American Art Magazine, Inuit Art Quarterly, and the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center Learning Lab page. She is currently working on a year long project revolved around social engagement and conversation as art practice. more.
What does it mean to design Social Justice? July 3, 2020, featured guests Kima and Dasha Kelly Hamilton.
Kima is a facilitator, DJ and social justice engineer. From Pennsylvania to Georgia to Alaska to Wisconsin, he has shaped his engineering skills and artistic talents into a signature work as a convener, counselor and ARTivist. Kima as traveled as an Arts Envoy for the U.S. Embassy in Colombia, India and Mexico. He has led writing workshops and wellness dialogues with school systems, social agencies, and correctional facilities. Kima leads discussion and healing circles for men with the Alma Center and is an on-air personality with Radio Milwaukee.
Dasha is a facilitator, writer and creative change agent. She is a widely-respected educator, culture producer, and founder of Still Waters Collective, an arts outreach organization committed to building community, capacity and confidences. She worked as a public relations account executive for several PR agencies and director of a citywide youth program for the YMCA. Dasha has, since, gone on to serve as an Arts Envoy for the U.S. Embassy to teach, perform and facilitate community building initiatives in Botswana, Canada, Lebanon and the island of Mauritius. more.
Featured guest dancers: Mariah Maloney, Maura García and Becky Kendall
Originally from Homer, Mariah Maloney is a New York-based dance artist located in Brooklyn and Brockport, New York. Mariah Maloney Dance formed in 2003 and today the company is invited to perform, teach and create new work in New York, throughout the United States, Europe, Asia and South America.
Maura García (non-enrolled Cherokee/ Mattamuskeet) is a dance artist who creates contemporary Indigenous performance to form connections, empower cultural values, explore the rhythms of the natural world. Maura’s artistic creations reflect the power of stories to form and change our realities. Through narrative-driven choreography and beat-embracing movement.
Becky Kendall is a choreographer, performer, and educator based in Anchorage. Creating work for a stage, a park, or a rooftop, she is inspired to connect to people in new ways and in nontraditional environments After returning home to Anchorage, Becky founded Momentum Dance Collective with 6 fellow artists in 2008 and continues to serve as Artistic Director. more.
Friday, June 19, featured guests Nathan Shafer and Melissa Shaginoff. Nathan Shafer is a new media artist from Alaska specializing in augmented reality and digital humanities. He is one of the founding members of both the Meme-Rider Media Team and Manifest.AR. He was profiled by PBS Digital Studios as part of an online collaboration called The Future in 2014. Shafer’s geobased AR works have been displayed on every continent in multiple venues across the world. He contributed chapters to Augmented Reality Art, Augmented Reality Games II, and Augmented Reality in Education, in 2020. He received a Creative Capital award in 2020 for Wintermoot. Melissa Shaginoff is part of the Udzisyu (caribou) and Cui Ui Ticutta (fish-eater) clans from Nay'dini'aa Na Kayax (Chickaloon Village). Melissa is an Ahtna and Paiute person, an artist, a social activist and currently the curator of Alaska Pacific University’s Art Galleries. Within her current curatorial work, Melissa has focused intently on potlatching. She believes that the only future in which institutions embody Indigenous ideologies is one that publicly recognizes its power, and autonomously gives it away. Melissa has participated the Island Mountain Arts Toni Onley Artist Project in Wells, British Columbia as well as the Sheldon Jackson Museum Artist Residency in Sitka, Alaska. She has been published in First American Art Magazine, Inuit Art Quarterly, and the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center Learning Lab page. Her artwork is collected by the Institute of American Indian Arts, the Palmer Museum and the Pratt Museum. Melissa is also a part of the N-Collective, a new media group focusing on transparent and accurate representation of Indigenous experiences in fiction and science-fiction content. Melissa was selected for the Skövde Musuem’s AiRs International Artist Residency in Skövde, Sweden, she is currently working on a year long project revolved around social engagement and conversation as art practice. more.
Friday, June 12, featured guests Kat Moore and Tim Easton. Kat Moore, multi-instrumentalist and creative force known as The Forest That Never Sleeps, weaves a sonic tapestry with her compositions. Kat lives and teaches music in Anchorage. Tim Easton is an American guitarist and singer-songwriter playing rock and roll, folk and Americana music. He tours extensively and often plays in Alaska. Tim is based in Nashville. more.
June 5, 2020, featured guests Tamara Wilson and Jimmy Riordan. Tamara Wilson is a Fairbanks-based artist and creator of The Lemonade Stand, a mobile exhibit space with the mission to grow and connect creative community. Jimmy Riordan is an artist and educator living in Anchorage. He is currently working on the Alaska Bookmobile Project, bringing a 20 year old bookmobile out of retirement and re-imagining its role as a mobile library, community venue and art space in its new home of Anchorage. more.
May 28, 2020, featured Catie Bursch, Amber Webb and Thorey Munro. These artists have all lived and worked along Bristol Bay for many years.
Catie Bursch intertwines art, science and commercial fishing on a daily basis. She has fished in Bristol Bay for the past 30 years where she and Tom raised their two girls in the summer. She just finished a fellowship with Alaska Salmon Fellows exploring salmon sustainability, equitability and the Alaska Salmon/People system.
Amber Webb is an artist & activist from Dillingham, Alaska of Yup’ik and Unangan heritage. She received a Rasmuson Individual Artist Award and a Project Award. Amber explores pictorial Yup’ik storytelling to tell contemporary stories of oppression and resilience.
Thorey Munro spends her winters in Homer, Alaska and her summers salmon fishing on the Egegik River in Bristol Bay. She recently completed a masters degree in architecture and had an exhibit, May 2020, at the Bunnell Street Arts Center.
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April 30, 2020, featured visual artists Bruce Farnsworth and Sheila Wyne. Bruce Farnsworth is an Anchorage based writer, artist and community organizer. He founded and directed MTS Gallery in Anchorage and Light Brigade, a multimedia collaboration of artists who stage site specific art interventions in the built and natural environment. He is Co-Lead of the Pan-Arctic 8Boxes Project. Farnsworth was the recipient of the first ever “President’s Award” from the Rasmuson Foundation, an award created by the foundation’s President and CEO to honor his work in neighborhood revitalization through the arts.
Sheila Wyne is a visual artist based in Anchorage. Her studio work has been shown across the state, the Lower 48 and overseas. Her work is in permanent collections of several Alaska museums, and she has designed over 20 public artworks. Wyne has worked as a set designer with theatre companies in Alaska and the Northwest and she is core Member of The Light Brigade. Wyne has been awarded a national NEA/TCG Fellowship in set design, a Rasmuson Artist Fellowship and grants from Alaska State Council on the Arts, the NASE Development Program, the Andy Warhol and Rockefeller Foundations as well as the Governor’s Award for Individual Artist. more.
May 21, 2020, featured Homer Youth guests: Ella Parks, Drew Wimmerstedt and Asa Panarelli
Asa Panarelli is a locally grown actor and musician. A recent graduate of Homer High, he looks forward to delving deeper into all the art and creativity that Homer has to offer.
Ella Parks is a singer-songwriter who was born and raised in Homer. She currently resides in Austin, Texas where she is making new music and hopes to build a career out of it someday.
Drew Wimmerstedt is a visual artist raised in Homer’s art community. Closing to finishing their Associate in the Arts at Kachemak Bay Campus, Drew hopes to continue contributing to Homer’s healthy obsession with art. more.
May 14, 2020, featured Francesca DuBrock and Michael Walsh. Francesca DuBrock is Chief Curator at the Anchorage Museum. She is passionate about creative practice as a method of understanding and questioning the world, often collaborating with artists and community members to develop projects highlighting cultural diversity in the North. Before returning home to Alaska, Francesca worked as an artist, educator, archivist, translator, server and (briefly) in wood conservation in Maine, California, and Mexico.
Michael Walsh is assistant curator/archivist for the Ruben/Benston Film Collection at the Walker Arts Center. A teacher and studio artist, Michael Walsh has worked in moving image art since the early 1990s. He has curated programs for Korean galleries, San Francisco museums and microcinemas, Milwaukee’s urban meadows and shipyards, Alaskan airplane hangars, bunkers, and mountain tops. more.
May 7, 2020, featured Alaska artists Amy Meissner and Carla Cope. Amy Meissner combines traditional handwork, found objects and abandoned textiles to reference the literal, physical and emotional work of women. She has shown internationally with textile work in the permanent collections of the Anchorage Museum, the Contemporary Art Bank of Alaska and the Alaska Humanities Forum as well as various private collections. Carla Cope, from Homer, graduated with a BFA from Oregon College of Art and Craft in 2003 and lived and painted in Oregon, Wisconsin and California before moving back to Homer in 2010. Carla “finds fresh inspiration in this beautiful and quirky place. I’m driven by color and pattern. My imagery is derived from personal narrative and the messy, lyrical, tragic and profound experience of being an Alaskan woman, an artist, and a mother.” more.
David Pettibone is a figurative painter. He makes paintings of people and places which seek to convey the visceral emotions that arise from our convoluted relationship with the natural world.Ryan Conarro makes story-centered performance and sound works that aim to cultivate relationship and community more.
Amber Webb is an artist and activist from Dillingham, Alaska of Yup’ik and Unangax̂ heritage. Amber explores pictorial Yup’ik storytelling to tell contemporary stories of oppression and resilience. Emily Johnson is an artist who makes body-based work. She is based in New York. Raised in Soldotna, Alaska, she is of Yup’ik descent. more.
Visual artist Argent Kvasnikoff (Dena'ina/Alutiiq, from the Ninilchik tribe) and Alaska author Eowyn Ivey (Palmer, Alaska) discuss impacts of the virus and strategies for creative productivity. more.
Deland Anderson- "Rivers are the arteries of Alaska. Some are ancient. Some are brand new. Some are famed waterways. Others are so isolated only wild creatures travel their courses..." Atz Kilcher has been creating root and fiber baskets sourced from the landscape surrounding Homer for almost 35 years. "Each basket is adorned with found objects I have collected over the years..." Read more at www.Bunnellarts.org
“I am inspired by domestic spaces, memories, investigations of how things work, daily routines, and industrial materials, but also the need to escape it all and dream. My ideal creative environment is somewhere between an auto shop and a sewing room in a place beyond the reach of cell towers on top of a mountain that is weathered in with cotton candy clouds." Read more at www.Bunnellarts.org
Ninilchik native artist Argent Kvasnikoff was born in Homer and studied linguistic anthropology and art history. He works with humanist themes illuminated by his indigenous culture, with most of his work involving his culture’s endangered Dena’ina language through the Qena Sint’isis project.
Bunnell Street Arts Center presents “Qaspeq / Kuspuk /Atikluk” an invitational exhibit of innovations in traditional Yup’ik wearable art created by Indigenous Alaska, artists October 4 – November 4, 2019.
Featured artists: Amber Webb Bobby Itta Carla Gingrich Erin Gingrich Nita Rearden Darlene Wright
Alaska artist Sonya Kelliher Combs exhibits new work at Bunnell Street Arts Center during Alaska World Arts Festival.
Colleen Firmin Thomas is Gwich’yaa Gwich’in from Fort Yukon, Alaska. She studied printmaking and painting at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She lives with her family in Fairbanks, Alaska. She works with modern sewing techniques and traditional Gwich’in Athabascan materials and methods in her mixed-media paintings.
“I am exploring how all earthly things are connected by the smallest of threads and how we humans, willfully or unwittingly, alter those connections. My newest work is a series of vessels created using machine embroidery on water-soluble fiber. My desire is to illuminate the fragility of the natural world as well as its beauty, resilience, and strength.”
"My work tells a story; I iconize Alaska and my experiences here, both on land and at sea. I express my creativity and experience through coastal marine themes that capture the wild beauty of my home. I work with an encaustic medium, which is a blend of molten beeswax, damar crystals, and pigment."
“I pair simple drawings with ice and sky colored pots; generate repeating, tessellating patterns that have missing pieces or fall apart as they cover a curve; draw clouds with clay. I aim to make work that is special and also disarming – my version of village-Arctic-neo Alaskana”-Sarah Beaty
“By combining elements of Christian iconography with Alutiiq tradition, the artist suggests that they are equally important. She is asking us to consider traditional Alutiiq beliefs on the same level as Western beliefs” The Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository, Kodiak, Alaska