Artist Talks @ Bunnell

October 5th, 2018 First Friday with Keren Lowell

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.

2019 Community Supported Artist Talk

• 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.

April 1st, 2022 First Friday with Nathan Hall

Nathan Hall is a multidisciplinary sound and visual artist creating new work reflecting on his site-specific experience in Homer during his artist residency.

April 1st 2022 First Friday with Jesse Egner

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.

March 4th, 2022 First Friday w/ Berith Stennabb

"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. 

February 4th, 2022: First Friday Don Decker

"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

December 3rd, 2021 First Friday: Kim McNett

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.

October 1, 2021 First Friday: John Hagen, Kristin Link and Michael Walsh

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.

July 2, 2021 First Friday: Linda Infante Lyons

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. 

August 6, 2021 First Friday: Sheila Wyne

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.