DECEMBER 2022
100x100
The 100x100 is our annual exhibition sharing 100 or more artworks all priced at $100 or less. This year 66 artists submitted 140 artworks for the exhibition! Thank you to all the artists that participated.
Domestic Architecture of the Uncanny | Mandy Bernard
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.
Virtual Exhibition Tour
FORM/FUNCTION | Alaska Woodturners Association
Works by John Oswald and John Lane
NOVEMBER 2022
CENTER & SOUTH GALLERIES
FORM/FUNCTION | Alaska Woodturners Association
The purpose of this show is to explore the elastic boundary between art and craft. Exquisite craftsmanship is surely an important part of wood turning, yet form, texture, color and design combine with craftsmanship to cross that elusive boundary and became something greater. A container is not simply a container. At the inflection point of intention, inspiration, and uniqueness, it becomes a sculptural object that speaks to an aesthetic greater than that of mere bowl.
In this exhibit, the artists of the Alaska Woodturners Association speak to the qualities and demands of wood, as well as the art/craft boundary. Wood is the ultimate “found object,” and what artists do with it celebrates the beauty of the natural world. In this time when forests, the lungs of our planet, are disappearing, the use of wood as an expressive medium is another demonstration of the importance of nature and the planet to all of us and represents an exciting example of the fusion between art and nature.
Many thanks to the Alaska Woodturners Association Board, Tom Dooley, Brian Seitz, Bruce Bookman, Lars Johnson, Mark Figura, Chris Remick, Heather Ashley, Arnie Geiger, Jess Doherty and Bill Poole. Thanks also to the artists who provided their work for this show, John Oswald, John Lane, Jeff Trotter, Bob Coughlan, Bob Flint, Chris Remick, Doug Fraser, Paul Stang, Dave Boyd, Tom Dooley, Brian Seitz and Mark Figura.
—Elise Rose
Virtual Exhibition Tour
New Paintings (Landscapes & Portraits) | Linda Infante Lyons
Linda Infante Lyons, The Sovereign of the North, oil on panel
OCTOBER 2022
NORTH GALLERY
New Paintings (Landscapes & Portraits) | Linda Infante Lyons
My ancestors from Kodiak Island were both Alutiiq/Sugpiaq and Russian/Estonian. The Russian occupation was swift and devastating for the indigenous people and living creatures of the region. Lost and repressed language, cultural knowledge and spiritual traditions are slowly being rediscovered and brought to light.
With my landscape paintings and Christian icon inspired portraits, I take a deeper look at the world view of my Alutiiq ancestors, finding affinity in many ways with my own.
Alutiiq cosmology is built on the belief that all things, living and inanimate possess a soul, are infused with spiritual energy and are interconnected. In my paintings, both landscape and portrait, it is my hope to reveal this spiritual energy through color and light, representing landscape, plant, animal and human life as equals.
In the spirit of inclusion and interconnectivity, I acknowledge the duality of my history, past and present, native and non-native and build upon assimilated symbols of Christianity, inspired by traditional Alutiiq culture, creating work that exemplifies a world view I share with my ancestors.
Virtual Exhibition Tour
Recent Works | Graham Dane
Graham Dane, Faustus #6, charcoal, compressed charcoal, oil stick, oil pastel, pencil on paper
OCTOBER 2022
SOUTH AND CENTER GALLERIES
Recent Works | Graham Dane
Graham Dane presents drawings after works by Rembrandt: a return to semi-figurative work after over twenty years as an abstract painter. Studies, large and small, eventually destined for bigger paintings on canvas. In the Center Gallery are other recent drawings, all small scale studies, experimentations in themselves.
One of my oldest possessions – apart from a couple of toys/books currently in my parent’s attic back in the UK – is a framed print of the Kenwood Rembrandt self-portrait that my mother gave me when I was seventeen. At college my drawing instructor used to talk about “artists who should be locked away to give the rest of us a chance”. He used to name Rembrandt as one of them. (John Singer Sargent’s another,) Since art school I’ve produced drawings after the Dutchman’s paintings, spending many hours at London’s National Gallery in front of Belshazzar’s Feast.
During the pandemic I returned to looking at Rembrandt, initially producing a series of small- scale graphite drawings after Faustus and Belshazzar’s Feast that led to the larger charcoal works and paintings some of which are displayed here.
Working from figuration to abstraction there’s a process: smaller representational pieces, each progressively getting bolder, more directional with line or shape/color, increasingly about the original image’s pure composition; always an element of improvisation (why Belshazzar looks different), of asking questions, allowing the paint/colour combinations to make suggestions for the next mark and/or marks. Improvisation is key. The end point is always a surprise and never expected.
Painting is a very human activity that can be traced back tens of thousands of years; it’s an ancient activity. In an increasingly tech-orientated world, a world of cell phones, Instagram, of instant gratification and cheap mass production, of being drowned out by the cacophony of social media, what could be more humanizing than looking at art and producing something new, unique, that requires quietude, an intellectual and emotional foundation and physical effort beyond using just your thumb and index finger.
In addition to the works after Rembrandt, also shown this month are charcoal drawings from other series of work.
I returned after many years away to drawing with charcoal after watching my university students enjoying themselves getting messy, pushing it (plus compressed charcoal and/or chalk) around. Everything is recent - drawing as a serious activity in itself, to explore new ideas, languages, of thinking with carbon. You might say that there’s an obsessional quality to it – some five hundred in the last three years. These are a selection from several series:
Drawings from a Pandemic
A Chlorine Aqualung
Phoenix
All three were related and/or came out of the (on-going) pandemic years. There’s a fantastic cartoon by Pablo Helguera, a woman turning round to an artist saying, “I was really beginning to like this until you started explaining it.”
I’ll leave it there.
Virtual Exhibition Tour
Loose Ends | Linda Lucky
Linda Lucky, Self Portrait on a MAD Magazine Game Board!, acrylic, 18 x 18 inches
SEPTEMBER 2022
Loose Ends | Linda Lucky
Linda Lucky is a retired art teacher from New York. She is a mixed media artist known for her papier-mâché dogs and other critters. Lucky is also a monologue writer and performer, and has appeared at Out North in “Under 30” and twice for Arctic Entries at the Alaska Performing Arts Center. Lucky is also a volunteer and member of the IGCA and a serves as a docent at the Anchorage Museum.
Loose Ends is an exhibition that is all about fun, play, and the celebration of life’s milestones: two decades in Alaska after only aiming to stay for one year, and turning 80 on September 23rd! Loose Ends means trying out something new or finishing up what was once started: new subject matter, style, or materials in art making. It’s about the people and the things I love in my life. It’s not a retrospective because a lot of the work is new. The show was created in joy, and I hope it affects you in that way too.
During this exhibition, Linda Lucky was featured on Alaska Public Media's weekly program State of Art, which covers arts, entertainment, and culture in Anchorage.
Virtual Exhibition Tour
Tinkering | Robert Werner
Robert Werner, Design for instrument that displays VO2 Max while biking and cross-country skiing
AUGUST 2022
SOUTH GALLERY
Tinkering | Robert Werner
Tinkering is an exhibition of a variety of engineered objects that have been created for fun over the last 8 years. Most have some purpose and are designed using 3D printing and tiny computer brains. A full description of each creation as well as detailed instructions on how to build them is included with each object.
Visit Robert Werner’s Instructables website to learn about the devices included in this exhibition.
Virtual Exhibition Tour
FACE IT! - Faces of Fear, Anger, Reverie, Defiance, Delusion and more | Ronald Viol
Ronald Viol, Scowling Man, glazed stoneware, approximately 16 x 9 x 11 inches
AUGUST 2022
NORTH GALLERY
FACE IT! - Faces of Fear, Anger, Reverie, Defiance, Delusion and more | Ronald Viol
Face IT! is an exhibition, primarily, of ceramic vessels and sculptures that explore how the human face expresses ideas, emotions, feelings, and moods. The sculptures range in size from several inches to over two feet. The works are made of stoneware clay and they are stained, underglazed, painted, weathered, and glaze fired to cone 5.
Artist Statement
Throughout history the human face has been a major art genre. Artists depict the human face because of its formalistic beauty and Its ability to express a wide range of ideas, emotions, feelings and moods. In portraying the human face artists have used every type of media, style and technique. I use clay to portray the human face because of its unbelievable plasticity, chromatic/textural density and its inherent variability. My sculptures are stoneware, painted, stained, weathered, underglazed, glazed and fired to cone 5. In my ceramic sculpture I address how the face makes meaning out of some of the issues that define the modern world. These issues are universal and in some instances they are of particular importance to Alaskans. How do isolation, alienation, division, uncertainty and living under constant surveillance affect us? What effect do social, political, economic and psychological pressures have upon us? What do we look like when we are in pain, afraid, angry, silly, envious, elated, happy and delusional? My sculptures address these ideas in unique ways. The source of my information is looking at faces in the world. The media, another source, presents us with countless images of the human face in every possible configuration. I like to turn off the sound on the news, movies and television programs to watch the expressions of the actors and personalities’ faces. I often zoom in on the transitory video image with my iPhone to capture a still image for additional study.
Some books that have influenced me:
How Emotions are Made, Lisa Feldman Barrett
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animal, Charles Darwin
Anatomy of Facial Expressions, Uldis Zarins
Facial Expressions: A Visual Reference for Artists, Mark Simon
Virtual Exhibition Tour
Trending Towards Tapestry / A Changing Epoch | Rachael Juzeler
Rachael Juzeler, Improv H2O Quilt no. 2, bullseye kilned glass, reclaimed line, wood, metal, 10 x 12 x 2 inches
AUGUST 2022
CENTER GALLERY
Trending Towards Tapestry / A Changing Epoch | Rachael Juzeler
Trending Towards Tapestry / A Changing Epoch is an exhibit of my explorations in glass, mosaic and plastics. With my all-encompassing philosophy of creative reuse and working with processes having a high degree of experimentation, my art is reflective of the intense beauty found in the natural world and my surroundings of Southeast Alaska, while acknowledging and illuminating the societal problems of waste, industrial and plastic pollution and climate change. Entwining my research into herring, barnacles, cave paintings, improvisational quilts, plastic recycling and utilizing my continuing education and skills in glasswork; I have woven together an exhibit to elucidate these subjects.
This past year I have been trying to incorporate plastics into my glass work. As my artistic mentality revolves around the reworking of waste materials, I realized I needed to acknowledge the abundance of plastics in our environment. After many trials, I developed a way to spin twine from single-use plastic bags, creating a visually appealing material, and started using it in my work, creating nets and “weaving” with the twine. As well as focusing on single use plastics, I utilize materials I pick up off the beach, as marine debris is a compounding issue which will have a profound effect on all life as we know it. However, not everything is doom and gloom. Species will adapt and there still is wondrous natural phenomena which happens all around us.
I find beauty and inspiration in natural patterns. I explore these patterns using glass as my medium. Glass, as a material, is illuminating and reflecting, transparent and opaque, utilitarian and fanciful. Through the medium of kilned glass I explore these contradictions and relish opening the kiln to find how the material has transformed. Ever curious of how I can combine the natural beauty of glass with plastics has become my new flight of fancy.
I hope you enjoy my vision - - - - Rachael
Virtual Exhibition Tour
As seen on the radio
JULY 2022
As Seen on the Radio
As seen on the radio is an exhibition of work by twenty artists who've been guests on the KONR Out North Radio program Art Matters, and has been curated by the host, artist Graham Dane. The exhibition showcases artists from Alaska and beyond, spans abstraction to figuration, includes photography, painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture, and is as wonderfully eclectic as the radio program that brought them together.
Statement by curator Graham Dane
Art Matters first aired in August 2019 and airs on Saturday morning, 11.00am Alaska time. The first chat was with Juneau-based artist David Woodie the day after his show opened at Cyrano’s (September 2019) which had relocated from its original downtown location into what had previously been the Out North building. The program’s original intent to focus on Alaskan visual art and artists morphed into shows about visual art, visual culture, and aspects of art history quickly. Every artist in this exhibition has come on-air to talk about their work and practice.
In the last two-and-a-half years there have been interviews with sixty artists from Alaska, the Lower 48, Canada and Europe (UK and Sweden). Broadcasts have dealt, to name a few topics, with recent Black Lives Matter demonstrations and art, the 1937 Entartete Kunst exhibition/contemporary censorship, art-washing philanthropy, aspects of The Sublime, on science fiction tropes, comics/graphic novels and the depictions snow and ice across the centuries (with an Alaskan twist).
Out North Contemporary Art House originally applied for an LPFM (low power frequency modulation) license in 2002, under the guidance of co-founders Jay and Gene and a handful of knowledgeable volunteers. Permission was granted to build Anchorage’s first LPFM station in 2008. Operations began out of a VW microbus in 2010 and relocated to the former home of Out North in East Anchorage. In 2017 KONR moved operations to Downtown Anchorage for a short period before moving to a new studio space in the heart of Spenard. It’s still there.
From humble beginnings, KONR-LP now provides a platform to support local artists, emerging talent, it hosts important discussions and gives voice to under-served communities. Our current group of over twenty volunteers creates 40+ hours of original content every week; the station airs 40+ hours of Alaskan music - more than any radio station in Alaska.
A selection of Art Matters broadcasts can be heard at https://www.mixcloud.com/grahamdane/
Artists included in As seen on the radio:
Indra Arriaga Delgado
Paul Behnke
Terri Broughton
Simon Carter
John Coyne
Graham Dane
Dr. Herminia Din
Perry Eaton
Asia Freeman
Hal Gage
K N Goodrich
Virginia Katz
Ted Kincaid
Bonny Leibowitz
Linda Infante Lyons
David Myrvold
Alex Rydlinski
Sara Tabbert
Jane Troup
David Woodie
Read about each of the artists in this pamphlet compiled by Graham Dane:
Virtual Exhibition Tour
Lux Botanica | Vanessa Powell
Vanessa Powell, Three of Wands, giclée from lumen process image, 18 x 12 inches
JUNE 2022
CENTER AND NORTH GALLERIES
Lux Botanica | Vanessa Powell
Artist Statement
I have always known the connection between nature and humanity. As a child I spent hours singing, dancing, and creating imaginary worlds among the lights and shadows dappling the forest floor. Nature has long been my playmate, my partner and my space to dream.
My alternative process photography series, Lux Botanica, combines botanical material, expired photographic print paper, and a centuries old cameraless photography technique to create artwork that coaxes shifts in perception and invites new interpretations of my known world. Color, translucency, and light guide a refocusing of surface level vision to reveal an image that feels familiar and, at the same time, manifested entirely of dreams. '
Lumen Prints
The lumen print was first developed in the 1830’s by William Henry Fox Talbot. Talbot placed plants on sensitized paper and exposed the paper to sunlight, creating a negative print from which positive contact prints could be made. The original lumen print is archivally unstable and known as a fugitive (impermanent) print. Fugitive prints continue to expose over time, leaving countless opportunities for reiteration and exploration.
The images in Lux Botanica derive from their original, fugitive prints. Immediately taken after being pulled out of the light, these images are scanned, then refined in the digital darkroom to portray the artist’s vision.
Each fugitive print is unique to the paper on which it was created. Expired black and white photographic print paper was used to create all of the images in Lux Botanica, ranging in expiration between 1956-1988. Variable focus, uniquely textured areas, and interesting inclusions are expected as they add to the authenticity of the photograph. These are unique to the ephemeral nature of the alternative process print.
Virtual Exhibition Tour
Cubist Portraiture | Shiela Mahaney
Shiela Mahaney, Family, acrylic on paper, 12 x 9 inches
JUNE 2022
SOUTH GALLERY
Cubist Portraiture | Shiela Mahaney
Carousel faces
Spinning around.
Multi perspectives;
Fractured, but bound!
Mardi Gras palette,
Ecstatically bright.
Facial celebration;
Collage of delight!
Cubist Portraiture chronicles a painter’s rite of passage along my journey of stylistic exploration. One day, while dabbling with a cubist framework for painting composition, something clicked. I found myself under the spell of true inspiration! Suddenly, my family, friends, and even our dog Maximus, were all transforming in my mind’s eye, through a cubist filter.
I could not wait to express their images onto canvas using the most vibrant colors possible. There are 31 paintings in the collection, and the work flowed from my brushes as though ‘Cubist Portraiture’ had been inside me all along waiting to be freed.
Virtual Exhibition Tour
The Site of Landscape | Rachel Mulvihill
Rachel Mulvihill, Driveway, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30 inches
MAY 2022
NORTH GALLERY
The Site of Landscape | Rachel Mulvihill
Rachel Mulvihill (she/her) is a landscape painter of Unangan heritage born in Fairbanks, Alaska. As an artist who represents place, her interest and approach is formed by her upbringing in Fairbanks the homeland and traditional territories of the lower Tanana Dene Peoples where she continues to live and work.
Artist Statement
These paintings are not about trees. These paintings are about sight. They are about seeing and what we see when we look at landscape. They are also about where we stand when we look at landscape—the site. How is a landscape framed? How is nature framed by landscape? These trees are out of place: rooted in Fairbanks and here today in Anchorage, on the land of the Eklutna Dena’ina people. Are these “Alaskan” landscapes? My motivations as a painter stem from the complexities of this landscape.
Landscape has/is a history of naturalizing erasures, revisions, and constructed perspectives. Not only does landscape orient and produce it’s viewer but it also can transform the land itself. When I think about landscape I think about stepping back—a perspective of distance and framing from outside a space. Hito Steyerl has suggested that this metaphor could now been more accurately described as a falling backwards. Steyerl describes a “deteritorialized freedom” as a product of vertical perspective. The boundaries that describe spaces disappear as our perspective becomes untethered from a stable horizon and ground. Does untethered perspective do more to reveal or obscure the entanglements that complicate the landscape?
What can the positioning of landscape reveal about its relationship to place? I thought I was painting a referendum of the vertical perspective but I wonder if these paintings are an example of it (or an example of how difficult it can be to be grounded). They are untethered landscapes. Their site is both specific—to Fairbanks, to my experience—but also moving and transforming. Is landscape what I observe, is it the photograph that I take into my painting studio, or is it here, framed by this gallery space?
If being grounded is not always comfortable then it might be easier to experience place at a distance or through a frame. Being grounded is a metaphor for a state of mind as well as a lived experience of place. Being grounded can also be a way of understanding, acknowledging, and caring for the place where I am. There are myriad literal and imaginative ways to be elsewhere. For many people, including myself, being or becoming grounded may be/will be uncomfortable. In these paintings I wanted to look behind the metaphor of a groundless position.
Virtual Exhibition Tour
After Image | Carla Klinker Cope
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.
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
Seasoned Soul | Rose Hendrickson
Rose Hendrickson, Promise, steel, bronze, ceramic, underglazes/glaze, concrete base
APRIL 2022
IGCA Annex
Seasoned Soul | Rose Hendrickson
Rose Marie Hendrickson was born in Anchorage, Territory of Alaska, in the middle of winter. She is the oldest of seven sisters, and has one (adult) child, a daughter.
Rose has been passionate about mark-making since early childhood, teaching herself about concepts like perspective and volume from found art books, or modeling small figures from window putty, mud, children’s modeling clay, or wax. She has worked independently in many mediums, including graphite, colored pencil, pastel, watercolor, oil pastel, and oils. Early influences were the old masters of the renaissance and the iconic illustrators: Arthur Rackham, Brian Froud, Alphonse Mucha and the Hildebrandt brothers.
More recently Rose has been studying sculpture at UAA, graduating with her BFA in December, 2021. She has been devoting herself to ceramics, metal casting, and steel fabrication designs. Contemporary influences include Kesler Woodward, for his acute observations on Alaska’s changing light, and Nicholas Galanin, for his fearless incorporation of a broad range of materials in his focused pieces.
She lives and practices her art in Palmer, Alaska, where she is also a musician, gardener, gatherer, and nature lover in general.
Artist Statement
The rhythm of our seasons is my breath and my heartbeat. There is a symbiotic intertwining between that rhythm and my very soul that grounds me here in this place through the passing of time.
The seasons are a light map, a timekeeper, a compass directing life. Here, the endless winter darkness robs the breath, chills the bones and slows the heart to the tempo of hibernation. The welcome spring quickens the soul with joy and the hope of new life. The glorious summer drenches us in eternal light, filling our days with riotous color and abundance. The golden fall brings a tang to the air while the changing foliage, with bittersweet glory, warns of the coming dark.
Our extremes of light, temperature and terrain have challenged artists from among the first inhabitants forward to communicate the unspeakable beauty, power, scale and the seasonal light that have surrounded us here throughout time. The cycle of the seasons in this unique place focuses a sense of the Sublime: boundless, breathtaking, even terrifying. Our seasons and terrain can nurture, or kill, but they will never fail to inspire.
Against the pandemic framework that has so impacted our lives, I see the pure, relentless constancy of time and the endless roll of the seasons, one into another, year after year. I find comfort in this constancy.
We are so temporary. We get sick, we die, constant in our inconsistency, flickering against the backdrop of time. The seasons weave that backdrop. They breathe in their own rhythm. They do not stop for pandemics… and even the coldest depths of the whispering winter hold the promise of the coming spring.
2022 Members Exhibition
MARCH 2022
IGCA Members Exhibition
The Members Exhibition is an annual exhibition that showcases the recent work of IGCA member, donors and volunteers. This year over 70 artists submitted work for this exhibition, including painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, video, printmaking, fiber art, collage and photography.
Thank you to the artists that included work in the 2022 IGCA Members Exhibition!
Meg Anderson - Behind the Eight Ball Enterprises J. E. Ilgen & C. E. Licka) - Elizabeth Belanger - Mandy Bernard - Kayo Bogdan - Jackie Bowling - Randall Carlson - Nathalie Collins - Michael Conti - John Coyne - Kate Danyluk - Monica Devine - Keetra Dixon - Linda Farr - Donna Goldsmith - Mariano Gonzales - Carolyn Gove - Stephen Gray - Ann Gray - Hans Hallinen - AnneKathrin Hansen - Deborah Hansen - Judith Hoersting - Rhonda Horton - Ed Hutchinson - Jody Jenkins - David Joel - Susan Johnson - Barb Johnson - Yulia Kalagaeva - Amanda Kelly - Scharine Kirchoff - Matt Klinn - Susan LaGrande - Carol Lambert - Jonathan Lang - Petra Lisiecki - Linda Lucky - Melanie Lynch - Shiela Mahaney - Enzina Marrari - Carol McCarty - Iryna McCoskey - Richard Murphy - Monica O’Keefe - Karen Olanna - Jacob Paiz - Nathan Perry - Tami Phelps - MaryBeth Printz - J. Reto - Alex Rydlinski - Aditi Shenoy - Randall Simpson - Mikhail Siskoff - Nancy Stalings - Lauren Stanford - Andriana Strezoski - Addie Studebaker - Christine Sundly - June Takagi - Shoko Takahashi - Sandra Talbot - Sharon Trager - Owen Tucker - Amy Vail - Kathy Vail-Roche - Ron Viol - Jen Wang - Lee Waters - Gretchen Weiss-Brooks - Anna Widman - Nikki Wray
Virtual Exhibition Tour
GroundTRUTH | Klara Maisch
Klara Maisch, Chugach Mountains - Painting on Location, May 2021, oil on linen, 30 x 60 inches. Ahtna and Eyak Lands, Bagley Ice Valley, Chugach Mountains, Wrangell - St Elias National Park & Preserve. Accessed via basecamp
FEBRUARY 2022
GroundTRUTH | Klara Maisch
Klara is an artist living and working in Alaska. She seasonally instructs for Inspiring Girls Expeditions and guides for Arctic Wild. Klara is passionate about transdisciplinary thinking that involves art, science, and the natural world. Her work has been featured in exhibits and commissions throughout Alaska, as well as Washington, California, and Hawaii.
Artist Statement
Over the past year I visited landscapes throughout Alaska to create large oil paintings on location. These place-based paintings highlight landscapes experiencing the effects of large-scale climate change, including glaciers, recent forest fires, and the northern edge of treeline. Sometimes the signs of change are subtle, such as the relatively simple shape of a tree consumed by a higher intensity fire. Often they are more dramatic, like a newly revealed system of ice tunnels at the toe of a melting glacier. Painting on-site is a way to be in direct conversation with these places.
I am fascinated by the processes that transform and shape an environment, and choose painting sites where I can study the patterns of these events. Each painting is constructed and deconstructed on location and anchored upright with lines or laid flat in the snow or tundra while I work. I apply oil paint in thin layers, so the painting is dry enough to roll up for transport in a few hours. I often add finishing details once I re-stretch the canvas back in the studio.
In science, "ground truth" refers to information collected via direct observation while on location. Although scientific research informs the art, the process of painting outside adds layers of awareness and connection. Traveling through a landscape requires focus and attention to detail, revealing subtleties in the surroundings that are unique to that position and instant in time. Painting outside pushes this immersion further, as I interpret the processes that shape a physical environment through the flow of lines and inferred energy in my work.
Landscapes are a window into vast timescales and complex systems of interaction. Creating this work allows me to contemplate: How do we pay attention to our surroundings? How do we respond to transformation and change? How are we impacting the future?
The exhibit is made possible by a Career Opportunity Grant from the Alaska State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. The work is also supported in part by the Ma Johnson’s Historical Hotel, The Explorers Club, and Discovery.
To learn more about Klara and connect with her online, visit Klara’s website and follow her on Instagram and Facebook.
Virtual Exhibition Tour
Still Life | Alanna DeRocchi
Alanna DeRocchi, We’ll All Be Skulls; Empty Work Boots, 2021, ceramic, paint, stains
NOVEMBER 2021
CENTER AND NORTH GALLERIES
Still Life | Alanna DeRocchi
Through a series of sculptural still life tableaus, this work explores notions of disconnect, loss, and hopelessness felt in our changing world. Animal subjects share space with common objects to create symbolic connections to our human experience as it relates to the greater natural world.
Alanna DeRocchi is originally from Petersburg, Illinois. She received a BFA from Western Illinois University in 2004, and an MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2010. Since finishing her education, she has participated in several ceramic artist residency programs, including the Clay Arch Gimhae Museum Ceramic Arts Residency in Jilllye, South Korea, and the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Helena, MT. She was a 2017 Rasmuson Individual Artist Award recipient and a 2019 Alaska State Council on the Arts Career Opportunity Grant awardee. Her work is inspired by Alaska’s unique wildlife and environment. Alanna is currently a Term Assistant Professor of Ceramics and Studio Technician at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
In these tableaus, animal subjects share space with common objects to create symbolic connections within the human experience and the natural world. Remnants of animal life and taxidermy forms read like souvenirs, a record of a life lost. Preserved as trophies or treasures, animals remain tactile and real, yet still and disconnected. Through their recreation, they are saved from the tragedy of being forgotten. Confronting the animals as lifeless objects, we are forced to acknowledge the presence of death and reflect on our own behaviors.
Even the most mundane of objects can offer reflection when imbued with personal experience and significance. Some evoke meaningful memories, others can hold memories like stains; they haunt. Empty work boots become a poignant reminder of self-worth as you sit idle, removed from a daily routine. Good luck charms can symbolize comfort and hope in times of uncertainty or abandon. A small keepsake, like the rabbit’s foot or the buckeye, are held close and cherished as a wish to gain control of dire or despairing situations.
The creation of this work over the past year originated from overwhelming feelings of desperation and hopelessness. Each composition in Still Life aims to communicate feelings of detachment, longing, loss amongst the need for preservation and connection.
Virtual Exhibition Tour
Collages | Emily Longbrake
Emily Longbrake, Range Series, mixed media collage
NOVEMBER 2021
SOUTH GALLERY
Collages | Emily Longbrake
This body of work navigates the landscape and texture of the past 18 months in wood, glass and paper. These experiments with hand-marbled paper, laser-cut birch and art glass in relief and three dimensions reflect an escape into pattern, iteration and nature during a personally and globally tumultuous time. I'm honored by the opportunity to share these explorations.
Emily Longbrake is a born-and-raised Alaskan freelance artist from Anchorage. She finds joy in both analog and digital processes, and she enjoys combining craft and technology in a variety of media. Her work reflects the patterns, lines of connection, and constant change found in nature, and she’s especially inspired by the beauty of the mountains and plants near her home.
emilylongbrake.art
Recent Works | John Coyne
John Coyne, Summer, 2021, oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches
SEPTEMBER 2021
NORTH GALLERY
Recent Works | John Coyne
The isolation and disconnection of the ongoing pandemic fueled my exploration of the natural environment. Observations of places without people in avoidance of physical contact created a space for meditation and introspection. The nightmarish anxiety found a home in the form of cast metal. Taken together, these works examine the complexity of serenity and chaos, and how they exist together.
