The biennial Sealaska Juried Art Show and Competition, held in conjunction with Celebration, is intended to promote Native arts.

Northwest Coast art is known for its unique form-line distinctions that clearly distinguish it from other Native American art, Rosita Worl, president of Sealaska Heritage Institute said. The lines used are bold and strong and not jagged. Through the use of smooth and curving lines, clear boundaries and shapes are created. In addition, form line changes constantly, in both thickness and direction. Bold contrasting colors are used in Native art which allows the areas of color to be obvious and clear. Traditionally, the colors used in northwest coast art are black and red with black being the primary color of the form line.

New to the competition this year are categories that differentiate between traditional and contemporary art and some spectacular fresh pieces, showing the continual evolution of Northwest Coast art, she said.

Tlingit artist Nicholas Galanin, will be entering some provocative pieces that Worl says "will definitely invoke reaction." Galanin's new book, titled "What Have We Become?", confronts stereotypical notions and the composition of conservative Native art form. Galanin is scheduled to speak Friday.

In addition to the art show, there will be a series of lectures by well-known artists, art scholars and art historians. Bill Holm, professor emeritus from the University of Washington, was one of the first scholars to study and write about Northwest Coast rural art forms. He'll be lecturing on formline, an evolving art.

Tlingit glass artist Preston Singletary will deliver a lecture called "Ingun-uity: Glass Symbols of Cultural Knowledge." Singletary studied from 1984 to 1999 at the Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Wash. His contemporary art took first place in the Celebration 2004 art show and his glass designs are featured in museums across the country.

He began experimenting with transferring traditional wood-carved Tlingit designs to glass in the early 1990s, believing glass a particularly appropriate medium due to the history of trade beads. He also wanted the permanence glass offers and that wood-carvings can't duplicate.

Aldona Jonaitis, director of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Museum, will deliver a talk called "Beyond Tradition: Innovations in Contemporary Northwest Coast Art." Some of her many publications include "Looking North: Art from the University of Alaska Museum," "From the Land of the Totem Poles: The Northwest Coast Indian Art Collection at the American Museum of Natural History," "Art of the Northern Tlingit" and "Tlingit Halibut Hooks: A Study of the Visual Symbols of a Rite of Passage."

Robin Wright, professor of history at the University of Washington will lecture on material from her new book, "Northern Haida Master Carvers." For more than a decade Wright has been leading tours to Queen Charlotte Islands to study the sophisticated Haida art and culture. She creates context that brings the totem pole to life by interweaving the artistic developments of the great sculptural tradition, illuminating the variations in style that resulted from historical, cultural and individual circumstances.

Steve Henrikson of the Alaska State Museau and George Ramos, Sealaska Heritiage Institute Council of Traditional Scholars will talk on "Warriors' Armor and Codes" and anthropologist Thomas F. Thorton's topic is "Grandparents' Names on the Land."