Artist Talks @ Bunnell

March 2026, First Friday w/ Austin Parkhill

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.”

February 2026, First Friday w/ xochiyollotl

“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.

December 2025, First Friday w/ Tamara Wilson

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/

November 2025, First Friday - 10 x 10 Members Exhibit

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

October 2025, First Friday w/ Laine Rinehart

“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

October 2025, First Friday w/ Ethan Kayaaní Lauesen

“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

September 2025, First Friday w/ Lynn Larsen

“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...

September 2025, First Friday w/ Jenny Nakao

“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

August 2025, First Friday w/ Steven Godfrey

“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.

August 2025, First Friday w/ Sara Tabbert

“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...