The Bennett Prize 3 Finalist

The Bennett Prize is a grant program established to support women painters working in figurative realism. The prize provides $25,000 annually for two years ($50,000 total) to the winning artist. Ten finalists participate in a traveling exhibition and ongoing promotion in print media. I was one of the lucky ten finalists this year. The exhibition of the finalists started in Michigan at the Muskegon Museum of Art and will travel throughout two years in 4 museums and galleries across the country. I had the pleasure of meeting the 10 finalists, fabulous women painters in figurative realism from across the country.

With the Steven Bennett and Dr. Elaine Melotti Schmidt, founders of the Bennett Prize.

Salmon Culture, group exhibition at the Anchorage Museum of Art

The exhibition, Salmon Culture, created by a stellar group of Alaska Native artists, curators, academics and culture bearers opened at the Anchorage Museum in September 2023 with a gathering of artists and museum visitors August 2024. The exhibition featured artists considering the beauty and history of salmon which has nourished the bodies and spirits of the Alaska Native people for millennia. I was honored to have my painting, The Kal’ut Madonna, included in this exhibition. This painting was acquired by the Anchorage Museum in 2022.

Holding the precious gift of a jar of smoked salmon at the Anchorage Museum during the Salmon Culture exhibition reception.

We all gathered for the final day of the exhibition, curators and artists with a few words and thoughts about our work and the significance of salmon in our lives and that of our ancestors.

Anchorage Museum exhibition, "Extra Tough, Women of the North"

The Ahtna Madonna , part of the Extra Tough invitational exhibition, was on display for two years during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. This icon portrait, based on a friend and fellow artist, Melissa Shaginoff has found a home with a private collector. Melissa is an Ahtna Alaska Native from Southcentral Alaska, the Chickaloon region and her family belongs to the Caribou Clan.

The Ahtna Madonna, oil on panel, 30” x 30” 2020

Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH. Permanent Collection

I am pleased to announce my painting, The Isuwiq Madonna, has found a permanent home in the Allen Memorial Art Museum in Oberlin Ohio.

The Isuwiq Madonna, oil on canvas, 24” x 24” 2021 Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH

Exhibitions 2021

Solo exhibition at Bunnell Street Arts Center in Homer, Alaska. After a long year of pandemic lockdowns, this was one of the first in-person art exhibition gatherings. The show opened to a grand crowd on the fourth of July weekend. By August the Delta Covid-19 variant had reached Alaska and we were all back to our separate corners. It was fun while it lasted and it was great to get out, travel to beautiful Homer, Alaska and spend time with the good folks at Bunnell Street Arts Center.

Camouflage, oil on panel, 30” x 30” Bunnell Street Arts Center Solo Exhibition, July 2021

Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center Acquisition of " The Kal'ut Madonna"

I was commissioned by the Anchorage Museum to produce this piece for their permanent collection. The acquisition was funded by the Rasmuson Foundation. The painting, The Kal’ut Madonna, was inspired by my Alutiiq family and the women who worked the salmon canneries in my mother’s native village of Karluk.

Kal’ut is the Alutiiq name for Karluk, a once thriving Alutiiq/Sugpiaq village with an abundant salmon run on the Karluk River. My mother was born in Karluk and my great grandmother and grandmother spent a large portion of their lives there. As Alaska came under Russian rule, my ancestors processed fish for a wider Russian population. My great grandmother married an Estonian immigrant and only spoke Russian and Alutiiq. She died at a young age from tuberculosis.

This painting is dedicated to my Alutiiq ancestors, my family from Karluk and the sacred salmon that sustained them for over 4,000 years.

Kal’ut Madonna, oil on panel, 30” x 30” January, 2022

"Origins, A Genetic History of the Americas," by Jennifer Raff.

My painting, “Low Tide,” was chosen by the author for the cover art of this newly published book! The book has had great reviews and I am honored to have my work grace the cover. The painting is part of the Alaska State Museum’s permanent collection.

Launched February 8, 2022. Currently on the New York Times Bestseller list!

Ken’aq-Low Tide, oil on canvas, 48” x 60” 2015 Permanent Collection of the Alaska State Museum, Juneau, AK

The Anthropocene, International Gallery of Contemporary Art, August 2020

This August, the International Gallery of Contemporary Art, (IGCA) will host an invitational exhibition addressing the Anthropocene, the current era defined as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment. This is my submission for this exhibition, an oil painting titled, The Pangolin Prophecy.

The Pangolin Prophecy, 20” x 20” oil on panel, May, 2020

The Pangolin is one of the world's most vulnerable and trafficked animals, a possible vector for the corona virus. Some say the pandemic is the Pangolin's revenge. On the other hand, could this be our salvation?

All things are interconnected. When a species out of control upsets the natural balance, there is usually a check on this species, a crisis event that causes recalibration. Covid-19 may be our check, one that does not end in our extinction. Perhaps, Mother Nature has placed us on a time out, telling us all, "go to your room and think about what you have done!"

The pandemic has exposed profound social, ecological and ethical failures, laying bare structural racism, ecological degradation, income, justice and health inequality, a corrupt government and a ruling class willing to let us die in order to salvage their stock portfolios.

Yet, this pause has revealed our unique strength, the power of the people, the extent to which our collective efforts can effect massive positive change. Our unified effort to isolate in place saved lives of the most vulnerable. For the first time cities woke to clear blue skies and the possibility of a unified fight against Climate Change. Our collective energy transferred to the streets to protest racism, declaring in one voice, Black Lives Matter!

Mother Nature's time out is the chance to reset our priorities, reimagine the world we choose to live in. This may be the moment we wake up and gather to save ourselves.

Grow North Farm Sign and Mural Project, Summer 2019

This summer I was commissioned to create a mural/sign by the the Anchorage Community Land Trust (ACLT) in Mt View, Anchorage. The piece is a free standing mural and a sign for the ACLT’s new community garden, which opened this summer. The garden is an initiative that supports local immigrant and refugee farmers, small business development and fresh locally grown produce. Grow North Farm (GNF) produce is sold almost everyday of the week during the growing season and is a block from my studio.

The mural design highlights the diversity of Mt. View with a collection of designs inspired by traditional textile and tile patterns. I met GNF farmers and we chatted about their countries of origin and I showed them some of my ideas for the mural. The farmers are originally from countries such as Bhutan, the Congo, Somalia, Nepal and Nigeria. We looked at patterns and they provided feedback on the mural design.

In the mural you will see patterns inspired by Central and South American cultures such as that of the Aztec and the Amazonian Shipibo. I included designs inspired by Kuba cloth from the Congo, Dhaka designs from Bhutan and Nepal, Mali Bogolan mud cloth, Yoruba Asoke cloth from Nigeria, and a variation of a Saipo Tapa flower pattern from Samoa. You will also see Paisley, name from a town in Scotland, origins from Persia. I included tile patterns from Spain and Portugal, my favorite, the Ogee, originally from Morocco and Alutiiq Alaska Native designs.

I’ve always been fascinated with patterns and once I started research for this project, I was quickly consumed and obsessed with the abundance, variety and history of textile design be it traditional, contemporary or indigenous. Such beauty and wealth of culture and history! I was happily overwhelmed and humbled by textile design and designers. I can only hope to represent a few of these traditional designs with my limited background in this area. Some of the designs are from stencils of commercially available patterns that I modified and some are my own designs inspired by my research.

The original design for the mural/sign was for a 8 x 12 foot double sided piece with multiple traditional patterns and a large cutout of a beet silhouette. The leafy part of the beet was to extend out from the top of the sign.

However, it became clear that zoning codes and permits are more complex than previously determined, especially when the project involves a sign vs artwork. In the end, the leafy appendages were eliminated and multiple smaller vegetable silhouettes were painted directly on the mural surface. The vegetable shapes are from photographs I took of produce from the Grow North Farm.

The design process of a large public piece requires the most time and work, more so than the actual painting. The process includes the initial research, meeting with community members, the collection of resource imagery, ordering supplies, choosing colors and creating a small scale demo painting. Patterns require a base color and a pattern color, so I needed to choose compatible colors in terms of saturation, temperature and value, as well as coordinate colors with adjacent patterns. Putting these pieces together and balancing color was a challenging yet enjoyable puzzle. Please see the slide show below for more images of the mural process.

Many thanks to the good folks at the ACLT for their support of my work. Special thanks to AmeriCorps intern, Nick Bachman and a lead coordinator for the Grown North Farm. I look forward to Spring 2020 when the mural is to be installed and to more great produce from the Grown North Farm.

Bunnell Street Arts Center Solo Exhibition- June 2019

This summer I returned to Homer Alaska for a solo exhibition of paintings at the Bunnell Street Arts Center. The collection of paintings in this exhibit are a series of new landscape paintings and Alaska Native icon portraits in which I take a deeper look at the cosmology and world view of my Alutiiq/Sugpiaq ancestors.

I push my limits with color saturation while attempting to keep the work balanced, quiet and meditative. The Alutiiq people believe all things are imbued with a soul and are connected through a source of divine and universal energy. With this in mind, I bathe the subjects in my paintings in a source of light and color. You can read my artist statement for this exhibition below.

Homer is a popular destination for visitors from out of state and many of my paintings found a home with these visitors. Alaska artists are sometimes isolated from the rest of the world and it is always encouraging to see that my work resonates outside the borders of our northern territory.

Through this exhibition I was commissioned by a couple from the Netherlands and I’m pleased my work will soon a find a place in Europe. Many thanks to Bunnell’s director, Asia Freeman, the supportive gallery staff and Homer’s art loving community. Here is a slideshow of the pieces on display in June, 2019 and my exhibition artist statement.

Artist Statement

 “By combining elements of Christian iconography with Alutiiq tradition, the artist suggests that they are equally important. She is asking us to consider traditional Alutiiq beliefs on the same level as Western beliefs” The Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository, Kodiak, Alaska

 My ancestors from Kodiak Island were both Alutiiq/Sugpiaq and Russian/Estonian. The Russian occupation was swift and devastating for the indigenous people and living creatures of the region. Lost and repressed language, cultural knowledge and spiritual traditions are slowly being rediscovered and brought to light.

With this new series of landscape paintings and Christian icon inspired portraits, I take a deeper look at the world view of my Alutiiq ancestors, finding affinity in many ways with my own.

Alutiiq cosmology is built on the belief that all things, living and inanimate possess a soul, are infused with spiritual energy and are interconnected. In my paintings, both landscape and portrait, it is my hope to reveal this spiritual energy through color and light, representing landscape, plant, animal and human life as equals.

In the spirit of inclusion and inter-connectivity, I acknowledge the duality of my history, past and present, native and non-native and build upon assimilated symbols of Christianity, inspired by traditional Alutiiq culture, creating work that exemplifies a world view I share with my ancestors.

Government Hill Commons Mural Ribbon Cutting Celebration

We had a well attended ribbon cutting ceremony celebrating the completion of the Government Hill Commons mural, titled, Common Ground. Many thanks to the Mayor of Anchorage, Ethan Berkowitz , the Governor’s chief of staff, Scott Kendall and Atwood Foundation director, Ira Perman for attending and speaking at this event. Also, my gratitude to the GHC board for their support, the Attwood Foundation for funding this project and for my dear husband and fellow artist, Graham Dane for his help painting the mural.

Native Arts and Cultures Foundation 2018 National Artist Fellows Convening- Portland, Oregon

It has been such an honor to awarded a National Artist Fellowship this year from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (NACF). The NACF invited all 20 fellows to a three-day convening in Portland, Oregon where we had the opportunity to get to know the artists, NACF supporters and staff. We were treated to presentations from previous and current fellows including performances in music such as an Inupiaq rap artist and Hawaiian slide guitarist, poetry reading, and an amazing screening by one the fellows who is a Hawaiian filmmaker. I really enjoyed getting to know everyone and thankful to be included with this talented group.

The convening culminated with a honoring ceremony at the Portland Museum and a moving Hawaiian cava ceremony. Many thanks to the NACF for supporting Hawaiian and Native American artists.

(photo credit- Sven Haakanson)

Shaktoolik, Alaska-Bering Sea School District- Collaborative Mural

It’s been a busy summer and fall and I’m just finding time to catch up on blog entries from last spring. I wanted to enter a few comments and photos on a mural project I did with the kids of the village of Shaktoolik. Shaktoolik is an Inupiaq village on the Bering Sea and has been the center of Inupiaq culture for millennia. The village is also the rest station for the dog and mushers of the Iditarod Dog Sled Race.

A group of high school students and I designed a mural for the Armory Building, which is where the dogs and mushers stop and rest. The mushers bed their dogs on the west side of the building, away from the wind and enter for coffee, warm food and a nap.

The mural is made of primed plywood. The design is made-up of layered stencil images to evoke the texture of the tundra and the silhouettes of sled dogs to welcome the tired mushers and dogs to Shaktoolik.

I asked for volunteers, adults and kids for portrait photography as reference for future portrait paintings. I requested no smiles and for the kids, it was almost impossible! We all ended up in stitches as each subject struggled to keep a straight face!

I adopted a year old pup from the village and named him, Toolik and he has become a much loved member of my family in Anchorage. Many thanks to the lovely, generous people of Shaktoolik!

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Completion of the Government Hill Commons Mural

The GHC mural was finished last week. We lucked out on a week long stretch of warm sunny weather, unusual for Anchorage in September. All that remains is an application of an anti-graffiti coat and the ribbon cutting ceremony next Monday Sept 24th. I really enjoyed painting this mural and each time I undertake such a project, I learn something new. Unlike my studio practice which is more intuitive, mural painting requires a strong focus on the design and a strict adherence to this design. A clear plan, well defined process and tried and tested choice of colors is necessary.

Here are a few images of the work in progress and the final piece. Many thanks to Graham Dane, my husband and creative partner with his help painting this mural.

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Common Ground, 14’ x 100” exterior mural. -Linda Infante Lyons- 9/2018 CLICK TO ENLARGE IMAGE

Government Hill Commons Mural

This summer I am painting a mural on a 14' x 100' cinder block wall for non-profit, The Government Hill Commons (GHC). The GHC is a community led project in which a orchard and garden will be planted on a vacant lot located on the west end of the residential area of Government Hill. The GHC is an experimental community garden located in an unusually warm micro-climate. The newly planted apple, pear, peach and cherry trees are already producing abundant fruit.

I was tasked to create a design that observed the mission of the project and the long history of Government Hill. GH is one of Anchorage's oldest neighborhoods, a community perched on a hill with an eagle eye view of downtown Anchorage, a mix of historical homes and buildings, low income housing alongside a Spanish immersion elementary school and flanked by the Alaska Railroad, the Ship Creek Industrial Area, the Anchorage Port and in its backyard the towering radio towers of ATT, as well as the mighty JBER  Elmendorf Air Force Base.

 I wanted to create a design that represents this plucky diverse community and found inspiration in the plants around me. These are the plants poking up through sidewalk cracks, in vacant lots, the trees pushing up through the rusty refuse car yards in Ship Creek,  the tenacious plants we call weeds.  Weeds are global, familiar and recognizable, a perfect counterpoint to the cultivated garden and orchard of the Commons.

Government Hill is all of these things, beauty, history, order, decay, growth, the organic and  the industrial. This mural design represents the stubborn and unshakable spunk of this diverse community alongside the inspirational beauty and order of the Commons.

This is a work in progress, weather depending, to be finished before snowfall. The design process involved many long walks photographing  of weeds, the creation of large scale stencils and a snap line grid design transfer system.

More mural updates to come. Many thanks to the Atwood Foundation for a grant funding this project.

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Native Arts and Cultures Foundation- 2018 National Artist Fellowship

I was one of 20 artists selected for a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Artist Fellowship! This is an awesome opportunity and honor! Many thanks to the NACF for this award and for supporting my work. Here is a link to the NACF website with more information on this fellowship opportunity and profiles on the other 2018 fellows.  Congratulations to fellow Alaska NACF awardees, Brian Adams and Alison Akootchook Warden. 

Alaska State Museum- Solo Exhibition, "Ebb and Flow." March 2018

I am honored to be one of 8 artists selected to show my work at the Alaska State Museum in Juneau, Alaska. This is the first solo exhibition series in the beautiful new ASM building. Many thanks to Jackie Manning, exhibition curator, ASM staff,  and the Friends of the Museum.

Bunnell Arts Center-Solo Exhibition, "All Things Sacred" 8/2017

Here are a few images of my solo exhibition at the Bunnell Arts Center in Homer, Alaska last August 2017. This show featured a new body of work, Russian Orthodox icon inspired portraits of Alaska Native women. A quote from the artist statement: " Rediscovering culture and recovering lost religious traditions are first steps in decolonization. I replace the symbolic elements of the symbolic elements of the Christian icon with those of the Alutiiq/Sugpiak people. My ancestors are of Russian and Alutiiq heritage. Colonization by Russian and the US greatly impacted the language and culture of my Alutiiq ancestors. In these paintings I acknowledge the assimilated symbols of the colonizer and elevate, as equals, the spiritual symbols of my native ancestors."

Many thanks to Asia Freeman, director of the Bunnell Street Art Center in Homer and her wonderful staff. Also, a big hug to owners of the Bistro Wild Honey, originally from Kodiak, who catered the reception with traditional salmon pie, "Pirok," a favorite dish of my Alutiiq grandmother. 

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Artist in Schools Residency- Northern Journeys Grant-Lake Otis Elementary

Inspired by German photographer, Karl Blossfeldt, black and white plant photography, students at Lake Otis explored plant forms of all varieties. We started with monochromatic studies, learning how to mix a range of values and later moved on to using limited color palettes. Each class day used a distinct color palette, Monday Blues etc. The students were encouraged to create their own imaginary plants and the results were stunning! Many thanks to Graham Dane for helping me assemble all 300+ paintings in a grand hallway mural.

Dumpster Art Pilot Project

Graham and I painted a dumpster last week, a pilot project with the Anchorage Downtown Partnership and the Anchorage Municipality. These painted dumpsters are will be deployed in the community of Mt. View. Graham painted a colorful abstract design and I worked with layered traditional tile pattern stencils and faux painting techniques. We were able to work on these inside, in the Anchorage Artist's Co-op.

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