Where art and nature meet
Through workshops, residencies and events, the Sitka Center provides time and space for place-based reflection, inquiry and creation at the intersection of art and ecology. And on Thursday, Jan. 5, you can meet the newest crop of creatives at the first Sitka Resident Talk of the new year. The online event will feature brief presentations from the six artists and scientists who will be living and working at the center this winter: Eileen Hinckle, Mika Aono, Carolyn Hopkins, Larry Hufford, Eric Rannestad and Tara Champion.
Eileen Hinckle has been working as a muralist since 2012. She grew up in the Willamette Valley and is currently based in Corvallis. Her painting style is influenced by the seven years she spent living in South America, where she learned from and participated in diverse communities of muralism and street art. She has painted more than 60 murals on three continents, participated in international mural festivals and worked as a facilitator of participatory murals with children.
Mika Aono is a multidisciplinary artist living in Eugene. Her recent work explores humanness in absurdity and futility through laborious processes, giving meaning to the meaningless.
Born in Sendai, Japan, her multiple degrees include an MFA in printmaking from San Francisco Art Institute. Currently, she teaches printmaking and works as a studio technician in the Department of Art at the University of Oregon.
Based in Lyle, Washington, Carolyn Hopkins has an MFA in sculpture from the Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from the Kansas City Art Institute. Her recent work has been made from the viewpoint of the end in order to re-examine current political and ecological landscapes, as well as the rise of “solastalgia.” She has collaborated with American conceptual artist Mark Dion and been an Artist in Residence at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City, the Vermont Studio Center and Caldera.
Larry Hufford is a botanist and emeritus professor at Washington State University, where he directed the Marion Ownbey Herbarium and the Conner Museum of Natural History. Through much of his career, his research addressed the evolution of plant diversity, especially in the American West. He lives in Missoula, Missouri, where he writes about the intersection of nature, place and culture and is working on a book about Bears Ears National Monument that examines differing cultural values of land and the challenges of protecting public lands.
Also based in Montana, Eric Rannestad is an artist making work about the built environment and the systems that humans use to compartmentalize the natural world. He has a BA in Art and BA in Economics from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, and currently works as a freelance cartographer and a communications designer for the Montana Association of Conservation Districts. His research in environmental economics and his ongoing cartography and design projects are strong influences in his work.
Tara Champion is a Seattle-based artist and educator who explores biological visualization in humans and other species. Their current work applies visual truths to the concepts of memory and the shared human struggle of adapting to environmental change, be it of the familial, or the global climate. They have been published in the US and abroad, and exhibited in galleries throughout the Pacific Northwest and have an MS in biological photography and imaging from the University of Nottingham.
The Thursday, Jan. 5, presentation begin at 4 pm via Zoom. Pre-registration is required. For more information, go to sitkacenter.org or call 541-994-5485.