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

Virtual Exhibition Tour

Domestic Architecture of the Uncanny | Mandy Bernard

November 13, 2022 Karinna Gomez

Mandy Bernard, *Yielding Constraint,* 2021, repurposed wool herringbone coating, cotton fabric, buttons, willow branches, embroidery thread, foam, polyester batting

NOVEMBER 2022
NORTH GALLERY
Domestic Architecture of the Uncanny | Mandy Bernard

This installation and exhibit of soft sculptures serve as textile-based examinations of Bernard’s personal processing and regeneration within the past two and a half years, with a focus on shifts that have taken place inside the home. Designed to be the Alaskan counterpart to the installation Bernard created while on residency at Konstmuseet i Skövde in the fall of 2021, this exhibit will feature a corresponding fiber installation and new soft sculptures alongside work that was created in Sweden.

Artist Statement
Over the past two years, I have grown increasingly fatigued from ongoing adaptation to our new reality. At some point, I recognized a strange dissonance occurring within myself: one of exponential dread tempered with abject numbness. Curiously, this combination seemed to create an unexpected corollary of altered perception. Commonplace objects within my home—which had become a place of both refuge and suffocating confinement—seemed to acquire new, at times sinister, characteristics. I found myself reassessing my surrounding personal possessions and furnishings, and determined them to be wholly familiar yet distinctly uncanny.

This interior discord reflected what was happening outside of my four walls, as well as what was beginning to happen within my frame of mind. Over the past 2+ years much of society has reevaluated its standards of living, the things that are most important to us. It’s as if we’ve all had a collective moment of, in the words of David Byrne, “This is not my beautiful house.”

The aftereffects of this experience will undoubtedly unravel for years to come. This installation and exhibit of soft sculptures serve as textile-based examinations of my own personal processing and regeneration within this period.

Domestic Architecture of the Uncanny is supported, in part, by a grant from the Alaska State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

This exhibit could not have developed without the direct assistance, encouragement, and support from the following people: Tomas Asplund Gustafsson, Mette Muhli, Asia Freeman, Berith Stennabb, Donna Carr, Elissa Pettibone, Joey Lothian, Andrew Cutting, Katie Ione Craney, Sara Tabbert, Karinna Gomez, Hans Hallinen.

And David Bernard, most of all.

https://www.mandybernard.com

Virtual Exhibition Tour

After Image | Carla Klinker Cope

May 23, 2022 Karinna Gomez

Carla Klinker Cope, *Spinning Salmon*, 2021, oil on canvas, 30 x 24 inches

MAY 2022
CENTER AND SOUTH GALLERIES
After Image | Carla Klinker Cope

Carla Klinker Cope is an artist living and working in Homer, Alaska. Carla is a long-time board member of Bunnell Street Arts Center in Homer and a founding member of Mother/Artist/Alaska, a statewide collective. She’s worked for local schools and community organizations designing and painting murals and engaging kids in creative exploration. She earned her BFA from Oregon College of Art and Craft in 2003.

I acknowledge the Sugpiaq, Dena'ina and Aluutiq people who have been in community on these lands long before occupation by settler culture. Untangling the mythic romanticism about what it means to be “Alaskan” is a driving force for my creative and social work. I commit to learning with an open, humble heart.

www.carlakcope.com

Artist Statement
After Image begins with a question. “What happens when the other shoe drops, when the fairy tale is over, when the line breaks and the boat is cast adrift?”

Looking inward for equanimity, this work has become my answer. After Image buoyed me through a pandemic and the extended storms of global, political and personal crises. This is how I’ve navigated the shifting tides of identity and belief.

I find my salvation in the studio. Creative inquiry and experimentation are my guides to exploring the honesty, beauty and tragedy of life. Through this work, I chart a course towards becoming whole in regard to myself and in relationship with others.

I grew up fishing salmon in Cook Inlet with my family as part of the commercial drift fleet. My work is informed by ocean extremes: abundance and scarcity, joy and fear, beauty and brutality. Salmon– from flesh to bones to scales– spawn a potent personal symbol which embodies life cycles and the search for home.

So, what happens when the other shoe drops, when the fairy tale is over? We must look inward. With acceptance and a willingness to adapt, I learn that I am seaworthy. After Image is simply an opportunity to begin again.

Virtual Exhibition Tour

Summer Paintings | David Pettibone

October 21, 2020 Karinna Gomez

OCTOBER 2020
NORTH GALLERY
Summer Paintings | David Pettibone

David Pettibone is a figurative painter. He received his BFA in painting from The Rhode Island School of Design and his MFA from The New York Academy of Art. He regularly exhibits and has taught painting and drawing at various schools and institutions in both New York City and Alaska.

Artist Statement
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. From large, figurative narratives to small, plein air sketches, 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.

https://davidpettibone.com

Morning View From the Shop , 2020 Oil on canvas 14x18 inches

Looking Down the Hill , 2020 Oil on canvas 12x12 inches

View From Lookout Mountain Trail , 2020 Oil on canvas 6x8 inches

Sunrise Over Alder , 2020 Oil on canvas 6x8 inches

Crisp Afternoon Sky , 2020 Oil on canvas 6x8 inches

Richard’s Tractor , 2020 Oil on canvas 10x8 inches

Spring View From the Shop , 2020 Oil on canvas 8x10 inches

House At the Dean Family Farm , 2020 Oil on canvas 8x10 inches

Study of a Broken Tree , 2020 Oil on canvas 18x14 inches

Back Yard, Overcast , 2020 Oil on canvas 8x6 inches

Front Yard, Overcast , 2020 Oil on canvas 6x8 inches

Anchor Point Beach Looking South , 2020 Oil on canvas 10x8 inches

Sunset On Clouds , 2020 Oil on canvas 8x6 inches

Waiting For the Wife To Come Home From Work , 2020 Oil on board 5x7 inches

The Neighbors , 2020 Oil on canvas 8x16 inches

Slough At Anchor Point , 2020 Oil on canvas 8x16 inches

Fireweed And Pushki, 2020 Oil on canvas 48x36 inches

Self-Portrait At Sunrise , 2020 Oil on canvas 52x30 inches

Beetle Kill Cathedral , 2020 Oil on canvas 36x48 inches

Virtual Exhibition Tour

Alder Studies | Elissa Pettibone

October 21, 2020 Karinna Gomez

OCTOBER 2020
SOUTH GALLERY
Alder Studies | Elissa Pettibone

Elissa Pettibone has been exploring historic and local dyes for over a decade, experimenting with plant based dyes as an alternative to caustic dyes within the textile industry. Her experience with plant dyes started at The North House Folk School in Minnesota, throughout college at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia and professionally on the east coast, primarily in Philadelphia and New York City, and now throughout Alaska. She has lectured, taught classes and produced custom natural dye orders for corporations, designers and artists. Her work is an investigation into the limitless spectrum of color that exists in our surrounding flora.

Artist Statement
Biology and chemistry dictate the outcome of all plant based dyework. Last summer, I learned that the combination of iron and alder provide a basic gall ink on fiber, almost fully black in color on protein fibers, which describes the high concentration of tannic acid within the plant. I hadn't seen another plant do this here in Alaska with such a strong reaction to the iron, so it only made sense to delve deeper. These works are studies of different mark making techniques using alder leaves, iron and a few other pH modifiers on linen. I look forward to working further with these processes with different parts of the alder plant along with different harvest times.

http://www.blueredyellow.org/