Ketchikan, Alaska Residency
I spent 10 days making art at the Ketchikan Arts and Humanities Council in Ketchikan, Alaska. Back in 2015, I had visited the area to attend the Port Protection Solstice Festival and spent time making small studies of seaweed, learning how the various types stretch and changed as they dried during low tide. The way that they create layers of protection covering tide pools was most intriguing, leaving me with questions about how they act as a skins, a protective layer that changes varying conditions. On a larger scale, how could they create a sculpture or covered structure?
May 2018
Seaweed Experiments
collected a large palette of types from local beaches. Components of rusty metal and neon fishing gear pieces taken from local dumpsters and purchased at garage sales, were used to provide structure
Collages
from the 1959 book ‘Alaska: Our Treasureland.” This process was integral to warming up my creative flow and leading me to think about how Alaska was viewed as a final frontier, full of opportunity for white men to harvest gold, catch endless fish and clear-cut timber all with blatant disregard for the indigenous populations and future of our natural environment. It is a collection of essays, photos and illustrations from a leather-bound, gold leaf embossed book that I inherited from a patriarch in the family that I remixed.
Photo Journey
of the 32 miles of road that line the island of Ketchikan. Taken on an iphone and printed on Zink paper (digital equivalent of a polaroid). The journey was mapped out on a grid, often with one photo looking out to sea and another looking inland, capturing both sides of the road.
