Artist Talks @ Bunnell

“The majority of my creative work over the past two decades has explored the subtle mechanics that inform how people connect to each other, and how people connect to place. In particular, I am fascinated in social anxiety as a disruptive, paradoxical yet also generative energy, one that both separates people as well as leading them to incredibly creative strategies of connection. In 2015, I launch...

Jenny Irene Miller: “I’m an artist who uses photography. My art practice is grounded in all of this: place, storytelling, Indigeneity, queerness, and familial and community relations. Photography provides a space for me to practice a form of careful observation that runs deep in the Inupiaq culture I come from. My art practice considers photography’s ability to share stories, to recall people and...

“This is the last installment of the Dusty Funk installation series, exploring performative experience and mixed media to question the status quo, identity, gender and race, and produce both beautiful and grotesque imagery in an Afro-surreal environment. I am looking for new ways to tell stories and engage with audiences with my work. Fresh inspiration abounds. The Quixotic Queericule Quazar uses...

“Glaciers sing. Blueberries listen. Bodies long to/for touch. “for a moment, we exist together, for a moment” is a series of sensory-based works examining communication, systems of care, semiotic beings, grief, and the aesthetics of accessibility within art and non-art spaces. Visitors are invited to participate and engage with the work through multiple entry points as a form of reciprocity. Many...

Bunnell Street Art Center exhibits installation artist Hans Hallinen. Join us for the exhibit opening on November 4th from 5-7pm, artist talk at 6pm. “Threshold” exhibits a series of objects designed in cooperation with algorithms and constructed with the support of computer-controlled tools by Anchorage-based artist, Hans Hallinen. More.

Indigenous artist Theresa Woldstad exhibits new work as Artist in Residence at Bunnell Street Arts Center for the month of October. Woldstad’s work explores the challenges of navigating legal access to resources an Indigenous artist in Alaska today.

“Allaŋŋuq elevates deep ancestral understanding of the power of wild non-human beings and the transformative power of adaptation to one’s environment. Change is a natural element of the living world and it can occur hourly, daily, seasonally, through lifetimes and millennia. Natural beings adapt to these changes in the environment through transformations. Since time immemorial, my ancestors have s...

  “I moved to Alaska in search of wilderness. Painting being an autobiographical medium, these works describe the domesticated wilderness in which I now call home.” – David Pettibone “As a studio artist my goal is to make fabulous tableware that infuses life with purposeful beauty. As an active community member and instructor I use my unique skill set, as an artist and small business owner, to off...

In times of pandemic, climate crisis, and ongoing assaults to human rights, how are Indigenous Alaska artists today strengthening self and community, and guiding the next generation from surviving to thriving?  Protection: Adaptation and Resistance centers Indigenous ways of knowing. Working within intergenerational learning groups and as collaborators in vibrant community networks, Alaska’s Indig...

Exhibiting artist, Amber Webb will create new work during her two-week residency from April 20-May 7. Her explorations of pictorial Yup’ik storytelling communicate contemporary stories of resilience, humor, changing climate, motherhood, historic trauma and resistance. “I will focus on a small wood carving or series of carvings based on a series of fat indigenous women. This is a continuation of ex...

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 neithe...

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 pr...

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

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.

"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. Fold...

"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 landscap...

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.

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.

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 w...

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 w...

 In my work I strive to tell a story through my experiences and imagination. My creativity and life stories are expressed with coastal marine themes that capture the wild beauty of my home, Alaska. The medium of encaustic is my material of choice; a blend of molten beeswax, damar crystals, and pigment. The inspirations for these paintings are weathered canneries, set net sites, and fishermen worki...

Dasha Kelly Hamilton is a writer, performance artist and creative change agent, applying the creative process to facilitate dialogues around human and social wellness. She is the author of two novels, three poetry collections, four spoken word albums, and one collection of personal vignettes. She has taught at colleges, conferences, and classrooms and curated fellowships for emerging leaders. An A...

How can land acknowledgment spark other ways of knowing, being and listening into action? Board members of Bunnell and artists, Argent Kvasnikoff of Ninilchik Village Tribe, and Thorey Munro from Homer, discuss the significance of language, materials, space and time in land acknowledgment.
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Drawing from mythology, folktales, memories, and personal experience she creates narratives and characters that aim to make some sense of our existence by giving form to our collective anxieties and desires. Enthralled by the emotive power and depth of expression achieved through puppetry and storytelling, she believes that within these realms lies a source of real-life magic that is deficient in...

What is the value and purpose of writing alternative histories of Alaska? What responsibilities does a person who operates from a distance have to a culture? Shared Universe Bookclub discusses cultural appropriation. With Nathan Shafer, Richard Perry, Lucas Rowley, Leslie Kimiko Ward, Vivian Faith Prescott, Jaclyn Bergamino & Patrick Lichty. more.