Currently on display at the International Gallery of Contemporary Art in Anchorage, Memory Bank is a series of images marking a slow move from Southeast to the Interior. Incorporating words and phrases written in Braille, reflection, and sensory conversation, this body of work considers many ways of knowing and being in relationship with a place or a person.

Works are available through the igca online store.

My piece “sít // kant’a” is included in Art x Climate, an online art gallery complimenting the Fifth National Climate Assessment. The National Climate Assessment “assesses the science of climate change and variability and its impacts across the United States, now and throughout this century.”

“sít // kant’a” Glaciers sing. Blueberries listen. Informed by the work of Julie Cruikshank and Dr. Janelle Marie Baker, this piece considers how place and beings are defined, and seeks collective action towards equitable, livable futures. Embedded underneath the images are translations of “glacier” and “blueberry” from English to Lingít Yoo X̲ʼatángi, the language of my home in Lingít Aaní, also known as Southeast Alaska. As a non-Native living within these lands, learning the Lingít language is a step towards decolonizing. Definitions come from the Tlingit Dictionary, edited by X̲ʼunei Lance Twitchell.

Included in the new exhibition How to Survive at the Anchorage Museum, I have an installed piece within Mary Mattingly’s River Lab — stay tuned for more images. I also have photographs and audio in the Community Climate Archive within the exhibition. Visit the Anchorage Museum for more information.

HOW TO SURVIVE

On view October 6, 2023 – January 15, 2025
Third Floor, West Wing

"The only way to survive is by taking care of one another.”
— Grace Lee Boggs, Chinese American activist and philosopher

As the Arctic continues to warm at four times the rate of the rest of the planet, Northerners are grappling with the practical and existential consequences of climate change. The destabilizing effects are numerous—melting permafrost, vanishing sea ice, unpredictable weather patterns, and struggling wildlife species—all of which are playing a role in reshaping Northern lifeways. While so much of this story is one of sadness and loss, stories of resilience, ingenuity, and hope are embedded throughout. Our collective story of survival is written by those creating space for hope, encouraging innovation, and envisioning sustainable futures grounded in equity and justice. Often, these stories, initiatives, and efforts are guided by Indigenous knowledges that remind us how we might live in reciprocity with the land, as Alaska Native peoples and global Indigenous communities have done since time immemorial.

How to Survive considers the idea of survival through hope and care, and asks how gestures and practices of love, protection, nurturing, and sharing can help us face climate change. Examining ideas of interconnectedness, listening, and caretaking, works on display invite reflection, encourage action, and urge us to consider our responsibilities to each other as well as to the plants, animals, lands, and waters of our shared planet.

Three of my pieces are included in this group show, on view at the Wialoa Center in Hilo, Hawaii, July 7-27th.

“Organized by the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, Art Department, this juried exhibit seeks to explore the question, "How will we respond to the collective demand for goods and services whose byproduct may destroy the ecology of the planet? How do we visualize the present, the change, or the end-game?" Juried by Diné artist and designer, Jared Yazzie.” 

Join me in Homer, Alaska, this February for a new exhibition at Bunnell Street Arts Center!

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 pieces are informed by and made in collaboration with artists, writers, musicians, researchers, and wayfarers.

Exhibit opening is Friday, February 3rd, 5-7pm with an artist talk at 6pm. A recording of a separate artist talk will be available with closed captioning and a transcript. Large font and Braille exhibition material is available upon request. Many pieces in the exhibition are to be engaged with through touch, sound, and text descriptions. For additional access requests or to schedule a private visit outside of gallery hours, call 907-235-2662.

Visit Bunnell Street Arts Center for more details and follow along on progress and updates through my instagram. I’ll be updating my website with images from the show over the next month.

This work is made with support from and Adaptation and Innovation grant and Career Opportunity grant from Alaska State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, Rasmuson Foundation, and the Puffin Foundation.

Look for my art in your community! Organized by the Juneau Arts & Humanities Council, “Portable Southeast offers a unique opportunity to cross both geographical and social barriers - exhibiting works from Alaskans in cities both small and large, at venues both traditional and non-traditional. Portable Southeast provides a new and exciting mode for artists to showcase their works beyond local reach, and brings works into new community gathering spaces. A curation panel from across the region with diverse experience and skill sets reviewed submissions and assembled the twenty-six pieces you see today. Portable Southeast tours from January to June, 2023, visiting Ketchikan, Petersburg, Sitka, Haines, Yakutat, and Juneau.”

Learn more about the exhibit, dates and locations

Landfalls: Dedications to Alaska Women Writers and Storytellers continues to travel! Visit the Ketchikan Arts & Humanities Council’s Main Street Gallery this March 2021. Join me from the comfort of your home for an artist talk via zoom on Saturday, March 6th, at 5:30pm. Please call the gallery to register! I hope to see you there: 907.225.2211

My piece Hearing Loss is included in the 2020 Alaska Biennial at the Anchorage Museum:

Alaska Biennial is organized by the Anchorage Museum and celebrates place through the lens of contemporary art. Alaska Biennial participants are Alaska-based contemporary artists exploring the North, its people, histories, and landscapes through a variety of media. The 2020 edition of the Alaska Biennial comes at a time of massive social and ecological change, and artists respond accordingly, reflecting their visions for the future.

Join me Friday, December 6th, at the Store at the APK in the Alaska State Museum for Gallery Walk! I’ll be showing a selection from “Landfalls: Dedications to Alaskan Women Writers & Storytellers,” paired with the books that inspired the art. I’ll also have a variety of new works available for sale. Landfalls will be on display through the end of January!

"I grieve the flesh-and-blood other. We are dependent. We can't be sufficient only with ourselves, no matter how fully realized all our aspects." Becoming Earth, by Eva Saulitis

How do we know, relate to, and narrate the complexities of living in the North? What words resonate with us when we talk, hear, or read about the place we call home? What sparks us to learn more, change our behavior, and show empathy towards a place and its people? These questions are loaded, complicated, and full of an emotional history of being connected - and disconnected - with a landscape.

Landfalls is a series of dedications to the women who have helped shape my understanding of the physical, mental, and literary landscape that is as broad as Alaska is in size. I hope this work inspires you to read further and find solace and solidarity within the words.

Landfalls is on display at the Haines Sheldon Museum through November 2, 2019.

Landfalls has previously shown at The Bear Gallery in Fairbanks, AK, in AB Hall during the North Words Writers Symposium in Skagway, AK, Kenai Peninsula College in Soldotna, AK, and at the Pratt Museum in Homer, AK.  

This project has received support, in part, by a grant from the Alaska Humanities Forum and the National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this exhibition do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Landfalls has also received support, in part, by a grant from Alaska State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

I’m heading back to Denali Park for a week as a McKinley Chalet artist-in-residence! This will be my second year at the Chalet, a partnership with the Denali National Park Artist-in-Residence program, where I was in residence in Winter 2018. Stop by and say hello if you're in the area! 

Like Alaska, the Icelandic landscape is challenging and often unforgiving with an unpredictability that heightens your sense of vulnerability. During my six weeks in Iceland, I kept a list of similarities between Iceland and Alaska as I came across them: migratory birds, fish, alpine plants, aurora, long distances, isolation, self-reliance, and, of course, the weather. This list gave me a certain comfort I didn’t quite expect. The place was indeed raw and rare, with a special starkness only the far north knows and holds close. I didn’t feel overwhelmed or awe struck, rather, at ease. I also found similarities to what we are experiencing at home: shifting habitats, warming oceans, melting ice, new fish species to northern waters, way too many jellyfish, the list goes on. People talk about it because they have to pay close attention to the land around them in order to survive. A volcano could erupt, a glacial lake could burst, a rouge wave - or the wind - could sweep you away. Noticing these similarities had a profound impact on me, and heightened my appreciation for Alaska, making home all the more important to cherish, protect, and stand up for.

These pieces were created during, and inspired by, a month-long artist residency at Nes in Skagaströnd, Iceland, a small fishing and farming community of roughly 400 people, situated in the far north on an inlet that connects with the Greenland Sea.

ICELAND - Alaska Arts Confluence, Haines, AK - Opening April 6th

Along with attending the artist-in-residence program in Denali National Park & Preserve, my time parallels WinterFest, an annual celebration of season, place, and community in Denali. Over the main WinterFest weekend, February 24-26, I will be teaching an art class using found and recycled materials to create winter scenes in the park. More details coming soon! 

Downstream is a dedication to, and celebration of, water and the rivers that define life along the Inside Passage. Using found materials, scrap metal, and encaustic, Haines artist Katie Ione Craney explores clean water and major salmon rivers in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia. Working in collaboration with Salmon Beyond Borders - a campaign driven non-profit working to defend and sustain our Transboundary Rivers, jobs, and way of life - next to each river will be a description of these complex arteries that carve their way to the Pacific Ocean. 

*10% of all sales will be donated to Salmon Beyond Borders.

Feb 2 - 25, 2018 - Opening on First Friday, February 2nd, 5-7pm - ConocoPhillips Gallery - Alaska Pacific University - Anchorage, AK