August in the Bear Gallery
Opening Day: August 5, 2022, 12–8 pm
Exhibition on view: August 5–27, 2022
Gallery hours: Monday–Saturday, 12–6 pm
Rivers of Ice
by Kathy Smith
Kathy Smith is a long-time resident of Homer, Alaska. She has been painting the Alaskan landscape for the past thirty years. Her work is influenced by seasonal cycles and natural events, such as tides, weather, earthquakes, volcanoes, and climate change. Her mixed media paintings include oil, encaustic, cold wax, ink, and printmaking. Her work is included in the Alaska State Council on the Arts Art Bank and in the permanent collection of the Pratt Museum.
Kathy has traveled to several glaciers during her time in Alaska. Rivers of Ice is a chronicle of these visits and an artistic exploration of our glaciers as living entities, now receding to the point of extinction.
Kathy’s in-person artist’s talk was canceled, but there is a digital presentation put together by Kathy about her work in her exhibition, Rivers of Ice, including a description of her visits to various glaciers, the effects of climate change on the Alaskan landscape, and her studio process for producing the work.
That presentation can be found here.
Masks are required at all Fairbanks Arts artist talks.
Flocked Together: An Avian Celebration
by Kassandra Mirosh, Weyekin Studio
Kassandra Mirosh fell in love with Alaska in 1991 when she traveled to the Kenai Peninsula to work for the summer. She became enchanted by the vastness of the wilderness, the incredible abundance of wildlife, and the generosity of the people. In 1999 she moved to the Yup’ik village of Kasigluk to teach high school and has called Alaska home ever since. Currently, she teaches Art, English, U.S. History and Spanish in the small town of Healy in the Denali Borough.
Kassandra grew up making art with her very creative mother, Rosalie Harms, who introduced her to many different mediums and nurtured the idea that anything can be used to make art. Kassandra watched her mom turn unlikely items into beautiful things and the experience sparked a life-long interest not only in art, but also in the transformation of ordinary things into the extraordinary.
In her role as a public school teacher, Kassandra has always infused art into each of her classes. She believes that art allows her students to connect with what they are learning in a deeply meaningful way and encourages creativity and originality of thought. She has expanded her love for teaching and art beyond her classroom. For over a decade, her art class has collaborated with the Tri-Valley School Building Trades Program, taught by her husband Don Mirosh. Kassandra’s students create art installations for the cabins built by Don’s students. The finished cabins are relocated to Denali National Park each spring when classes break for the summer. In addition, she welcomes opportunities to teach community workshops around the state. Most recently, she was the featured artist and workshop presenter at the 2022 Copper River Delta Shorebird Festival in Cordova, Alaska.
Kassandra has been active in the Alaskan art scene since June of 2018, when she had her first opportunity to show her work in a gallery as the Bear Gallery Gift Shop Artist of the Month. Since then, she has been the featured artist in many Alaskan galleries and has participated in several group shows, including the 2020 Arctic National Refuge Art in the Arctic show in Fairbanks. In August, Kassandra will have the opportunity to be an Artist in Residence for the Meg Hunt Artist Residency Program at The Wrangell Mountain Center in McCarthy.
Kassandra’s exhibition, Flocked Together: An Avian Celebration, will feature pieces made from combining a variety of recycled materials along with hand crafted and other specialty papers, glass, beads, wood, paint and textiles to create stylized images of the birds and the Alaskan environment in all seasons.
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