Raven Triptych Install at Woolworth Windows | downtown Tacoma Art

For the month of May this Raven triptych is installed down at the Woolworth Windows in Downtown Tacoma! This installation was a part of Spaceworks Tacoma’s public art program where they showcase artists in the various display windows in the old Woolworth’s building downtown. I’ve seen many art installs at the windows over the years, Including seeing my Wayzgoose steamroller prints displayed the past two years as a part of the group Wayzgoose print show, but this is my first solo install!

As these three pieces came to me I wasn’t entirely certain of their connection. I knew they all revolved around the sun and daylight. As I engaged with the process of making them more and more I started to see their connection as all being about sun cycles. The far left piece is titled “Solstice.” Growing up in Alaska, both the summer and winter solstices were notable occasions. I always enjoyed the endless summer in the daytime, and the darkness of winter. I love being back in Alaska in June to spend summer solstice where the night never truly gets dark. This piece is focused on the sun. The two dichotomies of winter and summer solstice constantly pulling back and forth.

The far right piece is titled “Equinox.” These two ravens hold the sun and moon, equal in size— day and night perfectly in balance. The equinoxes always feels like more subtle days. Quiet reminders that a turning point has been crossed. Today the days become longer than the nights, or today the nights become longer than the days. For a brief moment, the day and night are in tandem.

The center piece is titled “Angalix̂/Amgix̂” (translated from Unangam Tunuu: Day/Night). While the other two pieces depict annual cycles, this piece is the sun cycle of our every day. It can be hung with the sun at the top and the central mask awake, or flipped with the moon atop and the mask asleep.

These were made with carved plywood for the ravens, painted black with acrylic, and the sun/moons are gold/sliver leaf. The carved mask in the central piece is carved out of basswood. In the Woolworth windows they’re suspended from each other and the ceiling with wire, but for normal wall display they can be hung like a normal artwork with standard hooks on the back.

These pieces hang about 22” off the back wall in the center of the display window space, and the wire visually disappears so they all look like they’re just suspended, hanging weightlessly in the space, which is exactly what I wanted them to feel like. All three are available for purchase so if you’re interested in acquiring one (or all!) of them, get in touch!

Fuck Ice | Free printable Download

These posters are free to download and print out to post around your local neighborhood, in the window at your storefront, etc. Click on the image and it will take you to the file you can download and print.

Don’t have a printer? Your local library does! It’s usually only a few cents per page to print things at your local library.

Relief printing as a reflection of traditional indigenous carving

As a part of my artist residency at Sheldon Jackson Museum, I was invited to do a couple artist talks. As I’ve continued my relief printing practice, I’ve felt a correlation between relief carved prints and more traditional indigenous carving practices. The connection was brought to the front of my mind after attending Pacific Northwest Aleut Council’s culture camp last year where I took part in a mask carving class. I loved the class, carving masks, and also recognized a connection in the carving to what I was already doing as a relief printmaker. Even the tools were the exact same as the ones I used at home for carving relief print blocks.

For my talk, I delved into that connection and how indigenous artists have incorporated new mediums and materials into artistic practice as trade and availability bring them in. I also take a look back at the origins of relief printing and how it’s a truly ancient method of art-making. Watch it above!

“Sitka Wild” | A Brave Heart Volunteers Auction buoy

The last couple years I’ve watched as artists in Sitka painted these hard plastic buoys that get auctioned off every September to support Brave Heart Volunteers, a nonprofit organization offering free social, emotional, and educational support services in Sitka, Alaska. Their mission is to provide compassionate care, companionship, respite, and education to those facing illness, isolation, end of life, and grief. Both of my grandparents spent the last few years of their lives at the Pioneer Home in Sitka so their mission is important to me, and beyond that, I wanted to make sure I was giving back to the community that I was invited into as an artist in residence. So before I flew up to Sitka in early June I messaged them and asked if I could paint a buoy for the fundraiser this year and they said yes!

For my buoy I decided to celebrate some of my favorite flora and fauna in the Sitka area. On one side of the buoy there are undersea creatures and plant life, and on the other side are topside creatures and plants. These buoys aren’t the soft, inflatable kind you’re probably more familiar with. This is made of hard, hollow plastic so they’re easy to paint on but relatively lightweight.

For the undersea side I included salmon, kelp, a seal, sea star, and an otter mama and baby.

For the land side I painted a slug, ermine, mussels (which count as undersea, but they’re topside for low tide!), salmonberry, ravens, lupine, and a bald eagle.

The buoys are hung outside downtown over the summer and then they’ll be auctioned off in September! Typically they’re auctioned online in a silent auction but this year there’s going to be a live auction event as well.

It was incredibly fun to be able to paint a buoy this year and I would 100% do it again. It was a cool design challenge to paint on a sphere and I actually finally started using Posca pens for some of the detail work and definitely understand the hype.

If you’re in Sitka, keep an eye out downtown for it to get hung from one of the light poles!

“Sea Kin” - a print to support the sheldon Jackson Museum Alaska Native Artist Residency

When I applied for Sheldon Jackson Museum’s Alaska Native Artist Residency Program in December I pitched a project inspired by the Tacoma Wayzgoose Festival here in Tacoma. Every year Tacoma Wayzgoose accepts 12 artists to carve large scale 2x3ft linoleum relief blocks which are then printed live at the festival, and one print by each artist is raffled off to support the festival. My idea for the residency was to spend the residency carving a large linoleum block, then printing it with a steamroller as a community event, and selling the prints produced with proceeds going directly to the Native Artist Residency program. At the time I pitched the idea, federal funding for the program was in place, but in the few weeks leading up to my residency the administration pulled the residency program’s funding— funding which they’d been receiving for 30 years. Thankfully a private organization stepped in to fund this year’s residencies, but looking to the future with National Endowment for the Arts funding in jeopardy, I’m hoping the sales from these prints can help, in some small way, to continue the residency program.

This print was inspired by a dream I had shortly before leaving for Sitka. In the dream I swam all the way from Tacoma to Sitka, then upon arriving in Sitka I was out on a spit of land across the water from town and a huge tsunami wave tossed me into the sea. I was tumbling underwater, the ocean was opaque from the wave kicking up silt, and I realized I couldn’t tell up from down to find the surface and was going to drown, alone beneath the waves. I woke up in a start— it was one of those almost-too-real dreams that had you wake with your heart racing. Later that day I was ruminating on the dream and realized that while I felt alone underwater because I couldn’t see anything, I wasn’t actually alone. I was surrounded by kin: Salmon guiding me to the headwaters of a stream, kelp growing towards upwards to guide me to the surface, seals who could pull me along.

I spent the first week of my residency carving the linoleum, then we got our steamroller rental delivered and printed! The steamroller was a little smaller than the ones we use for Wayzgoose so I wasn’t sure if it would be heavy enough, but it worked perfectly and we ended up with nine prints. So many people came out to watch and it was such a blast getting to do another steamroller print!

If you’re interested in purchasing one of these prints, get in touch with Friends of Sheldon Jackson Museum, they’re available with a minimum donation of $250.00. Huge thanks to the Friends of Sheldon Jackson and the team at Sheldon Jackson Museum for coming on board with this (possibly) wacky idea— steamroller printing was something I don’t think had been done in Sitka before, and I’m grateful they trusted my vision!

If you don’t want one of the prints but still want to donate to the residency program you can do that here! It’s a great program that brings several Alaska Native artists and craftsmen to Sitka to create work for three weeks in the summer. They also do lots of other programming throughout the year focused on Alaska Native culture bearers, researchers, and artists. And if you’re interested in applying for the residency program, the application typically opens up in December!