JUNEAU — The State Museum’s upcoming solo artist exhibitions will highlight eight artists across the state including two from Ketchikan and one each from Juneau and Skagway.
Every two years the Alaska State Museum solicits Alaskan artists to submit their portfolios for solo exhibitions. This year the museum’s review committee reviewed 58 submittals from artists across the state and selected eight individuals to show their work.
The first of this series of solo exhibits will open in March 2017. The series will conclude in the spring of 2019. Dates for the individual exhibitions are still being arranged with the artists.
The selected artists are:
• Carmel Anderson, an installation artist from Ketchikan. Anderson’s life size sculptures and installations addresses issues of abuse and social issues.
• Annette Bellamy, a sculptor from Halibut Cove. Bellamy’s sculptures explore the natural resources of Alaska, focusing on both traditional and nontraditional uses of those resources.
• Linda Infante Lyons, a painter from Anchorage. Lyons oil paintings explore the sublime nature of the northern landscape through imagined Alaskan scenes of hushed stillness devoid of human presence and inhabited by flora and fauna.
• Amy Meissner, a quilter from Anchorage. Working with gifted cloth from strangers, Meismer combines multi-layered narratives by allowing the materials to provide an entryway to confront charged emotions around culture, motherhood, and domesticity.
• Daniel Papke, a painter from Skagway. Papke’s paintings focus on the human experience by layering visual narratives including contemporary characters, mythological settings, and the beauty and isolation of the north.
• Charles Rohrbacher, an icon painter from Juneau. Working as an icon painter in Alaska for 35 years, Rohrbacher’ icons depicting images of solace, peace, tenderness and vulnerability.
• Sara Tabbert, a printmaker and sculptor from Fairbanks. Observing the world around her, Tabbert’s work focuses on the small and microscopic elements of nature as a starting point for her work which includes, collages, carved panels, and relief prints.
• Donald Varnell, a Haida carver and mixed media artist from Ketchikan. Varnell’s carvings and mixed media work explore the ever-expanding zeitgeist of the human condition.
