On View: May 3-June 1, 2024

First Friday Opening Reception: Friday, May 3, 5–7 p.m.

(Gallery opens at noon on First Fridays)

The Bear Gallery is located on the third floor of the Alaska Centennial Center for the Arts building in Pioneer Park, 2300 Airport Way, Fairbanks, Alaska.

Flotsam, Jetsam, Forget-Me-Not by Oceana Wills

Oceana Wills is an artist, commercial fisherman, and Certified Nursing Assistant from Homer, Alaska. She works primarily with gouache paint on paper and clayboard panels (a smooth, archival surface) and experiments with other mediums like acrylic paint, clay, and embroidery. Her work is inspired by the landscapes, light, plants, animals, and objects that communicate the experience of a place. She paints from photos, life, and memory.  

“Flotsam is defined as debris in the water that was not deliberately thrown overboard, often as a result from a shipwreck or accident. Jetsam describes debris that was deliberately thrown overboard by a crew of a ship in distress, most often to lighten the ship’s load”— National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) website.

 “For me, a looser definition of flotsam and jetsam beyond buoys, ballast, and wrecks creates room to think about community and connection, and how discarded things become found things, living many different lives, and touching the lives of many people,” says Oceana.

As a commercial fisherman and inhabitant of a coastal town, Oceana has seen plenty of marine debris floating or washed ashore and wondered about its story. For her, the concept of flotsam and jetsam expands to be not just the discarded objects but their cycle of floating, drifting, being discovered, and repurposed.  She became interested in this concept artistically when she saw a connection to this imagery and the experiences of grief and anxiety that float to the surface of everyday life, as well as contentment and joy. 

“Flotsam and jetsam can imply both darkness and lightness (disaster can be the origin of flotsam and jetsam, and disaster touches everyone in some way. There is resilience in the way things can be salvaged and turned new),” says Oceana. Untangling this theme felt like an invitation to her to explore, to pick up ideas, turn them over, collect them, treasure them, or discard them again, to release some of the pressure of perfectionism and self-doubt, and to play.

During the pandemic, she created a body of work that stuck to techniques of scientific illustration, nature journaling, and landscape painting.  In that time of isolation, she paid more attention to the world around her and the plants and animals she shared her neighborhood and environment with. This experience helped her deepen her relationship with nature and shifted the approach to her work, drawing from images and life more than painting from her imagination in a whimsical style

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Alaskan Memories by Nancy Hausle-Johnson

Nancy Hausle-Johnson has been designing and crafting hand-painted ceramic tiles in Fairbanks, Alaska, since 1985. Her custom-designed art tiles and murals have been featured in numerous art shows public and private commissions.  One Percent of her work goes to Art commissions in hospitals, libraries, schools, sports arenas, a bird sanctuary in Alaska & Minnesota, the University of Alaska-Fairbanks buildings, and the Georgeson Botanical Gardens. She was a guest artist at Toolik Lake Field Station and an artist in residence in Fairbanks Schools. Her work is also available in the Fairbanks Farmer’s Market. 

Nancy draws inspiration from Alaskan images of birds, animals, flowers, and landscapes. Her work benefits from the many photographs and images shared by her photographer friends. They share the behaviors and stories that she tries to capture in her tile art.

She attended Central Washington State College and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in outdoor education and art education. She continues to expand her knowledge and skills through workshops and collaborations with other artists, following her mother’s advice that “you are never too old to learn.”

Nancy’s art is inspired by her travels throughout Alaska observing plants, animals, landscapes, and occasionally people. Her motivation is to bring a view of the Alaskan environment into spaces where people who may not have the opportunity to travel extensively in Alaska can sense its grandeur. “Maybe a tile will bring back a special memory of a place or experience they remember,” Nancy says.

Nancy uses her extensive library of Alaskan images and memories of parts of Alaska from her travels over the last 44 years in Alaska to compose images that best represent her memory of the experience or memories that others have experienced.

“In preparing a tile mural, I first draw my image on the tile (or tiles, for multi-tile murals), then apply glazes to produce multi-colored details. I have also explored different methods of applying the glazes, including finger painting with glazes,” states Nancy. 

She has been working on this body of work for the past two years, trying to record everything from landscapes, animals, birds, plants, and activities enjoyed in Alaska.    

This event is free and open to the public thanks to support from our members and donors.