In 2003, the Rasmuson Foundation established the Art Acquisition Fund, providing grants for Alaska’s museums to purchase current work by practicing Alaskan artists for their permanent collections. The Fund is administered by Museums Alaska on behalf of the Foundation.

In addition to supporting Alaskan artists, the project enhances the permanent art collections of Alaska’s museums and encourages them to develop and maintain formal policies regarding the acquisition, care and keeping of these museums' collections.

The Sheldon Museum has collected fourteen works of art through this initiative since 2003. Three are on permanent display: two in the upper gallery, one at the stair landing. The rest are on temporary display in the Lower Gallery for your enjoyment along with a selection of other contemporary art work aquired by the museum in recent years.

This exhibit will reside in the Lower Gallery until work begins on replacing the lighting and updating the halon system in late September.

The Sheldon Museum will be hosting an art contest held in conjunction with the next Big Read, February 26-April 2, 2010. The book selected for this year’s Big Read is Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon.

Click for Contest Rules

The ongoing Six Week Spotlight Program is a temporary art exhibition series launched in April of 2007. Our goal is to provide a way for local artists to put together museum-quality shows in a local venue and to “bring greater awareness, appreciation, knowledge and understanding of history, art and culture to and for the people of the Chilkat Valley.”

Local artists are invited to submit proposals for a six-week long exhibit of their work in the Elisabeth S. Hakkinen Gallery. Exhibitions are selected based on the evaluations of a guest juror.

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PROPOSALS ACCEPTED
for 2010 Six Week Spotlight Exhibits

May 30th, 2009
PRESS RELEASE

The Sheldon Museum & Cultural Center is proud to announce the artists awarded exhibits for the coming Six Week Spotlight Series. With 12 applications (10 solo shows and 2 duos), deciding was tough! Proposals are judged by an out of town juror. For those of you not selected, please re-apply during the Museum's next SWS application period in Early 2010.

PRESENT & FUTURE SIX WEEK SPOTLIGHT ARTISTS

• Amelia Nash & Andrea Nelson
  
• Sharon Svenson & Debbie Knight
  
• Sarah Cohen
  
• George Figdor

Please contact Karen Meizner or Jerrie Clarke at 766-2366 for additional information.

Eligibility:
Open to all resident artists of the Chilkat Valley who have not had an exhibition at the SMCC within the
past four years. Exhibitions may include more than one artist. Click on the link below for a sample application.
Download Six Week Spotlight Sample Application

PAST SIX WEEK SPOTLIGHT ARTISTS

• Donna Catotti

• Alexandra Feit

• Beverly Schupp

• Rod Weagant

• Suzanne McCollum

• John Svenson

• Kerry Cohen
  

AMELIA NASH & ANDREA NELSON:
Curious / Vicarious
April 9th - May 21st, 2010

Artists are ambassadors of the subconscious, channeling their obsessions for other to explore and reinterpret. Through interplay between works by Amelia Nash and Andrea Nelson, themes of curiosity and vicariousness will be explored.

Utilizing certain aesthetics found in common and often disposable objects from natural and manufactured enviroments, Andrea's lost and found assemblages reflect a fine line between strangeness and beauty. The pieces also explore how framing and method of display alter the significance of objects, finding inspiration in museum and scientific handling of "specimens." Viewers will be forced to confront their simultaneious repulsion and irresistible curiosity for what is odd and/or typically private.

Amelia's painstakingly detailed and elaborately framed microcosms spell out a passion for all things old, odd or outdated. Archaic expressions, bizarre situations, nonsensical fads, mythology, etc., sometimes of her own inventions, compose her subject matter. Mediums include pen and inck, watercolor, and, in this series, found objects and fabric. Amelia's art evokes nostalgia or deja vu in the observer, and offers a view into a world that feels honest or familiar, even if that world doesn't actually exist. To instill a sense of voyeurism and curiousity in the spectator, a variety of viewing options will be provided, including magnifying lens, peepholes, curtains, and folding screens.

These pieces will interact with and compliment similar themes between Amelia and Andrea's work. Their aim is to challenge the viewer with sensations of innocent curiosity, a more guilty sense of voyeurism and invite all to appreciate less obvious forms of beauty.

DEBI KNIGHT KENNEDY
& SHARON SVENSON:
Art Doll Puppets & Mosiacs
May 28th - July 9th, 2010
www.debiknightkennedy.com
www.extremedreams.com

"My passion has always been figurative sculpture. In recent years this has led me into the world of Art Dolls and then Puppets. So far I have been focused primarily on performing puppets. I would use this showcase to push myself, and my art further into the realm of Art Doll Puppets. In other words puppets created purely for the sake of art. Specifically marionettes. Something that one might hang in their home as an object of art. Puppets seem to have such a capacity for communication, for reaching out to people of all ages.

I have many ideas and visions of dolls and puppets but as an artist I know that what actually comes to life will be a surprise even to me. What I can be sure of is that this show will be adventurous, whimsical, colorful and most of all fun."

Debi Knight Kennedy

"I have been creating stained-glass mosaics for over ten years and would be thrilled to have a "show." My theme or title "In and Outside the Box" represents my normal framed wall-hung glass mosaics and mosaic shadow boxes, a technigque I have explored and wish to create more of.

"We have talked about a duo show for years, this would be a great time for it. We feel our creations together would greatly enhance the show."

Sharon Svenson

SARAH COHEN:
Sculpture
July 16th - August 27th, 2010

"As you can see from the images of my work I enjoy using many different sculputural media. More so than being defined by glass or metal or paper, my work is driven by the precess through wichi it is created. I often worki in a very tedious and meticulous manner. I am attracted to small detail sand repeating shapes and textures. My involvement with the materials is as essential to me as the final product. I must tough and be part of each element in the work. As the piece grows and chages I too am growing and changing along with it. At its conclusion I see the work as an inanimate object, but as a form that is now charged and vibrating with the energy that I have woven into it.

The work I exhibit in the Elisabeth S. Hakkinen Gallery will embody these qualities. My most recent interess, not show in my slides, has been centered around lace-making and textiles. A sensory, interactive installation including tapestry and soft sculptures is my vision for this exhibit. I will be honored to show my work at the museum and share it with Haines!"

Sarah Cohen

 

SERIGRAPHS BY DONNA CATOTTI:
26 Years of Hand-Printed Originals
April 2007
www.artstudioalaska.com

Born in Bennington, VT in1950, Donna Catotti has been painting, drawing and creating since she was a young child, often visiting the Sterling Clark Art Museum in Williamstown, MA, where she was inspired by Adolphe Bouguereau’s 19th century painting “Nymphs and Satyr”. After a semester of fashion design in NYC in 1968, she returned to Florida to earn a Bachelor of Design with high honors from the UF Dept. of Architecture in 1973. Moving to the Sierra Nevada high country in California, she began doing free-lance commercial art to support her love of backpacking, skiing, and river-running in the Grand Canyon. It was during this period that she learned the silkscreen process from sign-painter friend Bob Shedd. Focusing her creative efforts on fine art in 1979, Donna opened her first public showing of watercolor paintings in 1980 at the Pacific Grove Art Center on the Monterey Peninsula.

With her art career well underway, Donna commuted between California and Haines from 1986-1994, while she and artist/husband Rob Goldberg hand-crafted their home studio and gardens from the forest on the Chilkat Peninsula, where they now raise two boys, Aihan and Martin.

Besides serigraphy, Donna currently works in pastels and oils, and is exploring sculpture for bronze casting. Her work can be seen at the Juneau hospital and the Alaska Marine Highway building as well as in galleries throughout Alaska and in California.

ALEXANDRA FEIT:
Installations
August 2007
www.alexandrafeit.com

Alexandra Feit moved to Haines six years ago. She has a master of Fine Arts Degree in both Painting and Sculpture and merges her interests in 2-D and 3-D work in her installations. "Installations" features work designed to stimulate thought about what art is and can be. The show offers art as a fun & playful experience while continuing the aesthetic traditions of light, space, color and texture.

The artist draws her inspiration from many sources, including the following artists: Eva Hesse, Jessica Stockholder, Sol Lewitt, Robert Ryman, Agnes Martin, Martin Puryear, Yayoi Kuzama, Richard Serra, Annette Messager, Wolfgang Laib, Andrea Zittel.

Installation art became a movement in the last decades of the 20th century and has fully blossomed now in the beginning of the 21st century. The art addresses the entire experience of moving through space, often using multi-media. Sometimes it’s designed to fit in a particular space, other times the work itself creates the space. “Telephone Doodle” and “Shimmer” were designed specifically with the Elisabeth S. Hakkinen Gallery space in mind.

BEVERLY SCHUPP:
Pastel Paintings
May 2008

Often seen around the Chilkat Valley at her easel painting the local landscape, Beverly Schupp was born in 1949 and grew up in Banksville, New York. She earned a B.S. in Art Education from the State University of New York at New Paltz and taught art at Putnam Valley Middle School in Putnam, New York before moving to Alaska in 1977.

In Alaska, Beverly first worked for the Takotna Community School as an art teacher, classroom aide and substitute teacher. From 1982 to 1990, she was an itinerant art teacher, traveling by bush plane to village schools in the Iditarod Area School District. She received multiple “Percent for Art” commissions for schools at Takotna, McGrath and Shageluk. After completing her Alaska elementary school teaching certificate in 1992, Beverly taught in several villages until 2004 and also taught drawing and painting classes for UAF (University of Alaska, Fairbanks) McGrath Rural Education Center.

Over the past twenty-two years Beverly has continued honing her painting skills through university classes, summer arts festivals and various outdoor workshops in watercolor, acrylic, oil and pastel painting held in Denali National Park, the Brooks Range, New Mexico, Washington, and Maine.

Beverly and her husband, Marc Miller, retired from bush teaching and now make their home in Haines where Beverly focuses on her second art career.

She has exhibited works in several Haines galleries and the local branch of First National Bank, Alaska, and has participated in University of Alaska Fairbanks student shows, the Southeast Alaska State Fair and in Alaska Watercolor Society juried shows in Fairbanks and Anchorage.

ROD WEAGANT:
Oil Landscapes
July 2008
www.artiqueltd.com

Rod Weagant first came to Alaska in 1966 to serve in the Army at Fort Richardson. He quickly fell in love with everything about the state and eventually found himself working for the National Park Service in Anchorage. In 1973 he accidentally wandered into an exhibition of paintings by some of the great Alaska landscape painters. He was most impressed by the power of Sydney Lawrence’s work and the simple honesty of Ted Lambert. The outdoor life of these painters so appealed to Rod that he immediately quit his government job and entered art school.

He earned his BFA in painting from the University of Washington in 1978. His intention to return and paint Alaska was sidetracked to Eastern Washington, where he met and married his wife Jane and raised a family. In 2000, he and Jane fulfilled the dream of returning to Alaska when they moved to Haines. Rod loves the small town atmosphere and the proximity to great landscape subjects. The combination of the fishing industry, beaches, mountains, glaciers, alpine tundra and the Yukon interior provide more than a lifetime of painting inspiration.

Rod’s mentor, the Harlem Renaissance artist Jacob Lawrence, advised him to “accept the challenge about which he felt most passionate.” Consequently he has spent the last 25 years trying to communicate the wonder he feels about our landscape, by balancing the academic formalist background with the pure emotional response he feels when surrounded by the natural world. He travels the Yukon, Alaska, and the western United States painting and conducting workshops in plein aire painting. He has had over 40 one man exhibitions and has participated in numerous group shows including 3 museum shows benefiting the Nature Conservancy.

He is represented by Artique, LTD (Anchorage), New Horizons Gallery (Fairbanks), Allison’s Gallery (Manson, WA), Confluence Gallery (Twisp, WA) and Extreme Dreams Gallery here in Haines.

SUZANNE McCOLLUM:
Incubating
September 2008

Suzi taught herself to draw in dreams as a child (true story). She attempted formal artistic training in college but did not take well to it, preferring to learn the hard way.

She has made countless baubles, doodads, puppets and fairies to support herself in her travels over her years of wandering and began to paint in earnest when she found Haines. She has been painting for ten years now and has just begun to delve into ink and quill.

Suzi calls her watercolors her “tourist trade” and credits her mother with the idea of painting something people may want to buy. The acrylic paintings however are products of her heart.

Her artistic philosophy: “Color follows light and a line always knows where its going, though I never know where I’ll end up.”

She is showing 39 paintings for her 39 years (“its actually 40, but who’s counting”).

JOHN SVENSON:
Woodblock Retrospective
March 2009
www.extremedreams.com

John Svenson has lived and painted in Southeast Alaska for more than two decades. As a mountain guide and climber, John is known for his unique translation of the mountain image through painting and woodblock printing.

"While sorting through and “rediscovering” many block prints of the past for this show, I was amazed at the time I have dedicated over the years to this unique and exciting medium.

As with anything, if you stick with it there is a necessary evolutionary process. The artist has to become familiar with the uniqueness of their chosen materials learning how to combine them and produce a pleasing end result.

This is true with block printing. Your “paper” is either a piece of wood or linoleum which you cut into with knives or chisels. Then you have the inks and papers of which there are hundreds to chose from.

After saying that, and as I look at these prints which I produced over a 25 year period, I see high points and low. There are brilliant moments combined with what I’ve referred to as “Drooling geek” phases, when the brain almost shuts down and motor nerves take over. These can tend to be my personal favorites.

In the world of professional art I have established my reputation as a watercolorist, which my mentors approached with a decisive and bold style using large brushes and very wet paper. I have always, and continue to enjoy the looseness and spontaneity of watercolor although over the years I’ve tended to take breaks and work with other mediums; pen & ink, woodblock, video, Mountaineering, hot glass, to basically “dry out” and gain fresh perspectives.

At this point in my art career (it’s taken 40 years!) I have whittled my focus down to basically 3 disciplines; watercolor, woodblock and molten glass. Knowing I will never give up any of these 3 I have been, almost subconsciously, working them together resulting in extremely challenging creations that have me, not only excited, but freaked at times! In this exhibit I have included examples of the glass connection in addition to a few local kids block prints, which are all inspirational.

Climbing steep rock, can’t forget that, it’s the best!
IN RETROSPECT
Thin air and avalanches are for the birds, I’m outta’ there."

-John Svenson

KERRY COHEN:
Unfolding
May 2009
www.kerrycohen.com

"The work I produced over this past winter comes straight from my heart. I am grateful for the quiet solitude our long winters provide, as they give me space for introspection and time to explore my art.

I have always loved the raw earthy nature of clay, and it has been exciting to work with it in a more spontaneous manner.

My Previous work has usually been representational and executed through a safe and controlled process. Learning to acknowledge and express the deeper voice within myself made room for an organic unfolding of shapes and textures, mirroring the natural world.

Traditional Japanese Chiyogami and Washi papers provide my work with a translucency, vibrancy of color, and a quality of softness that is not available in clay. I find that the contrast of mediums: hard and soft, opaque and translucent, strong and fragile, hold a particular beauty.

Each piece in this show was created in response to my own experience of growth and marks a transformation in my creative process.

I hope these works speak to you in some special way."

Kerry Cohen