Reciprocity

March 26, 2025 Karinna Gomez

MARCH 2025
Reciprocity | Collaboration between Emily Longbrake, Christine Sundly & Momentum Dance Collective

In a world where we are all connected, the exchanges and cooperation we have with one another through time are a critical piece of the human experience. Reciprocity is a month-long performance and visual art installation that brings together work from Emily Longbrake, Christine Sundly and Momentum Dance Collective. The work explores the relationships between time, memory and the dualities that are constant in all phases of life.

During the gallery's regular hours, the community was invited to experience the art installations and video projection. There were also four live dance performances by Momentum Dance Collective.

About the artists

Emily Longbrake is a freelance artist from Anchorage, Alaska, blends craft and technology across various media. Her art is inspired by the patterns, connections, and constant change found in nature, particularly the mountains and plants surrounding her home.
https://emilylongbrake.art/

Of the Menominee Nation, Christine Sundly is an Alaskan-based artist with an emphasis on creating abstract art. She has an absolute love of color and patterns as shown in experimenting both digitally and in mixed media. Through both education and working experience, Christine maintains strong bones in pushing her limits and asking the big “why” questions when creating.
https://sundly.blogspot.com/p/about-artist.html

Momentum Dance Collective is a contemporary dance company in Anchorage, Alaska that delights in activating possibilities through collaborative partnerships and in unusual spaces.
https://www.momentumdance.org/reciprocity

Installation photos by Hans Hallinen

Performance photos by Lauren Langford Photography and True North Photography

The Egg Series, a Collection of Related Images | Susan Johnson

February 20, 2025 Karinna Gomez

FEBRUARY 2025
SOUTH GALLERY
The Egg Series, a Collection of Related Images | Susan Johnson

This project came into my life while adapting to sudden retirement and trying to deal with the isolation of my first long Winter in Kasilof. When it’s well below zero, it is way too cold to bring a camera outside. Despite that brutal cold, every day my Nine chickens were producing beautiful multicolored Eggs. They were not my usual subjects, and shooting indoors was a real change for me. I’d rather capture big dreamy landscapes outdoors, but this project proved to be a perfect way to keep shooting throughout the Winter.

After the editing and proofing were done, and when the prints were laid out on the table, I began to see how well the images related to each other. The layouts, shapes and colors formed into triptychs fairly naturally, and a concept was created out of chaos. These images were meant to stand alone, but since they all worked so well together, new visual relationships were created between the individual pieces, and the parts became a whole.

Virtual Exhibition Tour

Staged | Response

February 20, 2025 Karinna Gomez

FEBRUARY 2025
NORTH GALLERY
Staged | Response

Staged is an immersive still life installed in the Annex gallery next door. Over the past several months the community has been invited to participate in this environment, exploring the process of making as a performance - artists coming and going within the Annex, visible to passing-by viewers. Staged | Response is a collection of the aftermath, work made within and from the installation highlighting how different artists respond to a single space. This exhibit showcases a snapshot of our community's perspectives and how still life fits within contemporary art.

Virtual Exhibition Tour

Perusing Paris | Charles Mason

February 20, 2025 Karinna Gomez

FEBRUARY 2025
CENTER GALLERY
Perusing Paris | Charles Mason

This exhibition of street photography in Paris was made in late 2022, when my wife and I traveled there for ten days. Lisa is a walker, and I am a street photographer. This happy coincidence of our interests led us to walk ten miles a day for each of the eight days we were there. That’s eighty miles of city streets and sidewalks and museums and other public places that I was able, Leica camera in hand, to observe and photograph. All in arguably the most walkable and photographable city in the world. It was sheer photographic joy, and the work here is the result.

https://masonphotos.zenfolio.com/
https://www.uaf.edu/cla/news/2025/perusing-paris.php

Virtual Exhibition Tour

UNTITLED : Portal Series | j.Reto

January 12, 2025 Karinna Gomez

JANUARY 2025
SOUTH GALLERY
UNTITLED : Portal Series | j.Reto

Photographs by Hans Hallinen

Virtual Exhibition Tour

Sketchbooks | Carol Lambert

January 11, 2025 Karinna Gomez

JANUARY 2025
NORTH GALLERY
Sketchbooks | Carol Lambert

Presented in the North gallery for January, a collection of sketchbooks and drawings from Carol Lambert, curated by Joe and Sally Carr.

Carol was a longtime friend and supporter of the gallery as well as a regular exhibiting artist in our community.

As an accomplished painter and printmaker, Carol fundamentally took an analytic approach to her practice and method of creation. This involved countless hours of drawing and development of concept and ideas.

This exhibition provides insight into a truly unique creative mind, and a wonderful human being.

Photographs by Hans Hallinen

Virtual Exhibition Tour

Old and New: Soft, Sweet, Feathered and Furred | Christopher Judd

January 11, 2025 Karinna Gomez

Christopher Judd, Lion and Lady, graphite on Moleskine paper, 8 x 11.5 inches

JANUARY 2025
CENTER GALLERY
Old and New: Soft, Sweet, Feathered and Furred | Christopher Judd

This show is about animals.

Mostly bears, but mainly animals.

This body of work exemplifies who I’ve become as an artist, both in technique and subject matter. I love whimsy, I love characters, and I love storytelling. All of these drawings have pieces and parts of all three loves, but more than anything they’re a simple exploration of inspiration and imagery recorded the best way I know how.

The following is a collection of graphite drawings that I’ve created off and on over the past five years coupled with some of my work for 2024. It’s a contrast of an evolving style that exemplifies the first time everything clicked for me while drawing.

The drawing Jackal kicked off this long relationship with animals, and it was one of the first drawings that I had ever done that I felt pleasantly surprised by. Detail, feeling, composition, lighting, and style all finally came together into a picture that was the first major success in a medium I had not spent much time on in the 3 years preceding its creation. It was a moment where exploration in other media finally came together in the first material I was drawn towards.

I consider it to be the beginning of whatever mastery I demonstrate when it comes to Graphite drawing. The rest of the show is how things have gone since then.

Instagram @dao_ofdraw

Photographs by Hans Hallinen

Virtual Exhibition Tour

Process | IGCA Member Creative Process Videos

December 16, 2024 Donna Carr

Process: An IGCA member video compilation celebrating our community's ingenuity, craftsmanship, and creativity.

Artists include: Christina A. Barber, PhD, Mandy Bernard, Joe Carr, Sally Carr, Michael Conti, Maxine Fekete, AnneKathrin Hansen, Meghan Holtan, Tracy Irsik, Yulia Kalagaeva, Sharine Kirchoff, Carol Lambert, Emily Longbrake, Linda Lucky, Jacob Paiz, Tami Phelps, Gayla Ranf, Susan Joy Share, Adrienne Stohr, Sharon Trager, Owen Tucker, and Jen Wang.

Christina A. Barber PhD

Mandy Bernard

Sally Carr

Joe Carr

Michael Conti

Maxine Fekete

Annkathrin Hansen

Meghan Holtan

Tracy Irsik

Yulia Kalagaeva

Scharine Kirchoff

Carol Lambert

Emily Longbrake

Linda Lucky

Jacob Paiz

Tami Phelps

Gayla Ranf

Susan Joy Share

Adrienne Stohr

Owen Tucker

Sharon Trager

Jen Wang

Memory Bank | Katie Ione Craney

November 13, 2024 Karinna Gomez

Katie Ione Craney, *waiting*, 5 x 7 inches; *seed song II*, 3 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches; *“stay” (in braille)*, 3 1/2 x 5 inches

NOVEMBER 2024
SOUTH GALLERY
Memory Bank | Katie Ione Craney

This series is a reflection on my slow move from Southeast to the Interior; a process over 10 years in the making when I first started grad school and am now back to finish a degree in the Arctic & Northern Studies program. Within many of the images are words and phrases written in Braille. Some words repeat as meditations on their meaning and are in conversation with the place they are paired with. Incorporating Braille and mirrored surfaces into my work echoes a sensory experience of the lands and beings in the imagery. I’ve been learning to write in Braille as a communication attempt with my Great Grandmother Mary Etta, who was blind, as well as create space to consider many ways of knowing and being in relationship with a place or a person.

The handwritten Braille in this series is a letter-for-letter transcription, also known as Grade 1 Braille. The letters are written backwards, as I use a portable slate and a hand stylus to press the letters onto the page, or in this case, onto clear transparencies or into soft metal.

katieionecraney.com

Photographs by Hans Hallinen

Virtual Exhibition Tour

Resilient: Defining Alaskans through Landscape | Jason Lazarus

November 13, 2024 Karinna Gomez

Jason Lazarus, *Rivulets of Gold, Castner Glacier*, archival pigment print on Canson Baryta Photographique

NOVEMBER 2024
NORTH GALLERY
Resilient: Defining Alaskans through Landscape | Jason Lazarus

Alaska.

Towering glaciers, noble peaks, enchanting flora and plentiful fauna — all of these have been rendered in the idyllic perfection of a trillion photographs over the years.

Captured in the silver grains and digital pixels that shape our collective memories, these representations often fall short of truly conveying what Alaska is — they fail to define what Alaska means to Alaskans.

Shaped by their surroundings, Alaskans are a curious bunch, often taking pride in character traits that, to the outsider, seem unflattering. Old timers take pride in their tenacious and stubborn nature by being called Sourdoughs, while Cheechako newcomers are harshly mocked for their failures, yet strangely encouraged to persevere.

Our jargon-laden existence divides real Alaska (The Bush) from a more pedestrian lifestyle in the Lower 48 (the contiguous US). Our Breakup relates to a fifth season before Spring and Termination Dust signals the onset of winter.

Summed up in one word, Alaskans are Resilient. A product of our harsh climes, we have been shaped by our surroundings and carry with us a stoic nature that is reflected in the place we call home. For many of its people, Alaska’s lonely landscapes, unwelcoming frigid tundra and tumultuous winter weather reflects its true beauty in a way no sublimely captured landscape could. This work intends to capture that deep connection and our unwavering character traits through our surroundings, showing a rarified Alaska for Alaskans.

obscura-works.com

Photographs by Hans Hallinen

Virtual Exhibition Tour

Hotter Faster Louder | Sara Tabbert

November 13, 2024 Karinna Gomez

Sara Tabbert, *The Sultry Ditch*, 2024, wood veneer, relief printing, 12 x 12 inches. Photo credit Sarah Lewis Photography.

NOVEMBER 2024
CENTER GALLERY
Hotter Faster Louder | Sara Tabbert

I spent much of the past summer in a long-anticipated residency, the Windgate Arts Residency Program, offered through the Museum for Art in Wood in Philadelphia. During my residency I continued my work in marquetry, using the focused time to dive into new ways to layer, carve, sandblast, and print onto wood veneer surfaces. This experimental approach is informed by my background as a printmaker, where I’ve grown comfortable with the push and pull of adding and subtracting material to create images. Marquetry is traditionally a woodworking technique of great precision. I embrace the ongoing challenge of executing at a high level, while also choosing to approach working with the material in a less precious, less predictable way.

Summer in Philadelphia was defined by intense heat, overwhelming noise, and my own disorientation as I wandered the city. I walked through unimaginable amounts of trash, wild vacant lots, and observed the march of condominiums through old neighborhoods. I delighted in the unplanned sky party of orange electrical insulators and nests of wiring, the city’s baby blue bridges, the murals, graffiti, and ornamentation. I felt the challenges and beauty of such a peopled place.

Upon returning home, I realized the visual contradictions I sought out in an urban setting are the same friction points I look for everywhere. In a city’s density, the collisions seem louder and brighter, but they are all around me at home as well. The elemental nature of delicate vines climbing an iron fence in a trash-filled lot is not that different from the lacy ice forming on the edge of a mud puddle in my driveway. There is an energy in the edges, where disparate things that don’t necessarily make sense together are found in proximity, forced into accidental coexistence.

On display are the result of such musings, meanders and focused labor. I see these pieces as records of place and travel, riddles of process, and a reflection of my cheerful curiosity during a time of accelerating tension.

This exhibition has been supported by the Museum for Art in Wood’s Windgate Arts Residency Program and by a grant from the Alaska State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional support from Rasmuson Foundation’s Career Opportunity Grant.

saratabbert.com

Photographs by Hans Hallinen

Virtual Exhibition Tour

Unfrozen | Erica Miller

October 12, 2024 Karinna Gomez

Erica Miller, FE Co. Dredge No. 4, acrylic and mixed media on cradled wood, 6 x 6 inches

OCTOBER 2024
SOUTH GALLERY
Unfrozen | Erica Miller

This is a love letter to the great land. After the gold has been extracted and the trees harvested; what remains of industry, the grand machinery of human endeavor, ambition and toil, sinks into the gentle embrace of earth. So prevalent in Alaska, the rusting iron of the past is beautiful somehow. Wrecked and abandoned now, it seems to belong, becoming a part of the forgiving landscape, a witness to the passage of time. It is a story of history and decay, of nature's reclaiming force, accepting the encroachment of age on all things.

ericamillerart.com

Photography by Hans Hallinen

Virtual Exhibition Tour

Listening to the Quiet | Cheryl Lyon

October 12, 2024 Karinna Gomez

Cheryl Lyon, Exact Spot, encaustic on wood panel, 12 x 12 inches

OCTOBER 2024
CENTER GALLERY
Listening to the Quiet | Cheryl Lyon

Listening to the quiet is about noticing what I notice when I venture outdoors through the Alaska seasons. Taking in the beautiful complexities before me. Paying attention to the light as it gracefully skips across the water or shines through the clouds. Listening to the wind as it whispers through the trees, and gently moves around my face. As the poet Mary Oliver said about nature, “If you notice anything, it leads you to notice more and more”. I agree, I long ago embraced, I’m always painting, even when I’m not painting. I’m an observer, an explorer and an eternal student.

cheryllyon.com

Photography by Hans Hallinen

Virtual Exhibition Tour

Alaska: My Take | Elizabeth Pohjola

October 12, 2024 Karinna Gomez

Elizabeth Pohjola, Sitka Roses, mixed media, 36 x 36 inches

OCTOBER 2024
NORTH GALLERY
Alaska: My Take | Elizabeth Pohjola

A few years ago I walked into a paper store in Seattle and haven’t been the same since. I was seduced. This show of works in collage represents the products of that seduction. The images are based on elements from my homeplace, a place that has mesmerized me with its splendor my whole life. Alaska: My Take. Please enjoy!

Instagram @elizabethpohjola

Photography by Hans Hallinen

Virtual Exhibition Tour

Haiku | Shoko Takahashi

September 12, 2024 Karinna Gomez

Shoko Takahashi, *Against the Wind*, 2024, linocut and type

SEPTEMBER 2024
SOUTH GALLERY
Haiku | Shoko Takahashi

This series of relief prints with type stamping is my visual Haiku.

Japanese Haiku focuses on capturing a moment in time, a sense of enlightenment, and images from nature. When I read Japanese haiku, I always feel a sense of calmness and fresh air. I wanted to create the feeling of Haiku by focusing on Alaskan and Japanese animals and keeping the image simple. By integrating text into the design, I created the written haiku feeling in each print.

Instagram @print_wonder

Photo credit: Hans Hallinen

Virtual Exhibition Tour

Inosculation | Kendra Harvey

September 12, 2024 Karinna Gomez

Kendra Harvey, *No Hard Feelings*, 2024, ceramic earthenware, underglaze, watercolor, glaze, housepaint on wooden backdrop, 40 x 30 x 11 1/2 inches

SEPTEMBER 2024
CENTER GALLERY
Inosculation | Kendra Harvey

Inosculation investigates the symbolism of interconnectedness, exploring both the double-edged sword which comes with it: support and codependence, enablers and detractors, isolation and community. Using earthenware clay, I depict the organic nature of these connections by sculpting a wide cast of animal figures. These familiar forms, rendered in unfamiliar colors and poses, invite viewers to observe them coil towards and away from each other, narrating the complexities of our shared human experience.

www.kendraharvey.net

Photo credit: Hans Hallinen

Virtual Exhibition Tour

Affinity for the Unknown | Melanie Lombard

September 12, 2024 Karinna Gomez

Melanie Lombard, *Devil's Club 3*, cyanotype, devil's club leaves, sunlight, moonlight, and northern lights on watercolor paper and birch panel, 42 x 42 inches

SEPTEMBER 2024
NORTH GALLERY
Affinity for the Unknown | Melanie Lombard

In my work, I explore the intersection of natural imagery and abstraction through the creation of experimental cyanotypes. This process involves using light sensitive chemicals to produce contact prints, which I make with natural materials like bird nests and leaves. By working outdoors, I invite the environment to play a role in my creative process, fostering a collaboration that embraces the unpredictability of the natural world.

My practice is rooted in the therapeutic potential of art, and I find solace in the unexpected results that emerge from my process. This journey into the unknown allows me to cultivate a deeper connection with my surroundings and to embrace the beauty of uncertainty. Affinity for the Unknown invites viewers to contemplate their own relationship with nature and its mysteries.

www.melanielombard.com

Photo credit: Hans Hallinen

Virtual Exhibition Tour

3 Threads | Mariano Gonzales

August 19, 2024 Karinna Gomez

AUGUST 2024
3 Threads | Mariano Gonzales

NORTH GALLERY
Talismans

Have you ever had your identity stolen? Your money? Have you ever been hacked or your bank account and identity compromised? I certainly have!

Talismans are supposed to protect the user/wearer from bad luck or calamity. The talismans I have made will (hopefully) protect the wearer from evil stuff that happens in our digital world.

These talismans have wall mounts so that they can function as Art…not just live obscurely in a jewelry box in the bathroom!

WARNING: Should you purchase a talisman and find that it doesn’t protect you, no refunds!

CENTER GALLERY
Killer Drones

Look at the faces of the killer drones. Look at the faces (or bodies) of their victims.

Think about the killer drones’ racism, misogyny, homophobia, love of assault weapons, and hatred for others not like them.

This is the country and world you live in.

Protect yourself and your fellow human beings!

SOUTH GALLERY
Landscapes

I am an artist who has lived in Alaska for 65 years, though I am far from an Alaskan artist!

I am consistently visually fascinated with the beautiful and amazing land mass that is this state.

As well, having driven through every state in this nation (except Vermont and Hawaii) and Canada, I also have memories of the many wondrous landscapes outside of Alaska.

So, I am always exploring alternative media and imagery to create landscapes from memory.

These days, I find that digital tools and media offer the quintessential alternatives!

Photo credit: Hans Hallinen/IGCA

Virtual Exhibition Tour

What Good is Fruit that is not Sweet? | Young Kim

July 16, 2024 Karinna Gomez

Young Kim, *Imported Fruit,* archival pigment print

JULY 2024
CENTER GALLERY
What Good is Fruit that is not Sweet? | Young Kim

"What Good is Fruit that is not Sweet?" is a photography project documenting the life of my mother as she ages and confronts changes in her health and mobility. It explores our relationship as parent and child and how roles shift as time persists. These circumstances also pose the questions of whether we can quantify or qualify how good a person is at fulfilling a societal role and whether the romanticization of the “American Dream” can influence those parameters.

These images aim to celebrate daily life with an emphasis on my interpretation of events and with less rigidity around how the events unfolded. This body of work utilizes the indexical nature of photographs to world-build, create and preserve a past that is nostalgic and reminiscent, regardless of whether it is factual.

www.young.kim
Instagram: @theyoungkimosabe

Virtual Exhibition Tour

Panda Mick's RV Park and Stay-In | Abigail Kokai

July 16, 2024 Karinna Gomez

Abigail Kokai, *Grandma's Gypsy RV and the gang,* Multi-media sculpture: cardboard, fabric, stuffing, yarn, plexi-glass, string lights

JULY 2024
NORTH GALLERY
Panda Mick's RV Park and Stay-In | Abigail Kokai

Textile artist, Abigail Kokai, has fabricated a world of little fuzzy haired characters that manifest into human-size form as they visit Panda Mick's RV Park and Stay-In. Through a collection of small sculpture, air-blown inflatables and paintings Abigail constructs a universe of creature comforts inside the gallery.

abigailkokai.weebly.com
Instagram: @kokaithefabricator