Artists in THEIR Residence 2021

Because we can't have artists visit the library, we are going to bring you to visit the Artists in THEIR Residence! 

To recognize the creative use of technology to support learning, literacy and art, we are connecting families with Artists in THEIR Residence. Artists will be featured on our website with a short video interview or series of photos. Stay tuned for some videos!

Featured Artist: David Brame

Artist Statement: The Amazing David Brame, Blerd Extraordinaire-- I'm an educator, afrofuturist, artist, illustrator but foremost I am a cartoonist. My work fts within a framework of afro-pop surrealism with a heavy focus on narrative and mark making. As a cartoonist I use my skills to make comics and other forms of visual sequential storytelling. Check out My recent works from ABRAMS/Megascope Publishing, After The Rain, and ROSARIUM PUBLISHING's Box of Bones. They are both intimate portraits of black gothica and African mysticism via the lens of horror.

Featured Artist: Lee Post

Artist Statement: Lee Post is a lifelong Alaskan, growing up in Palmer and living in Anchorage. He has spent his career working with youth, beginning as a social worker with child protective services, then the past nineteen years as a Juvenile Probation Officer for the State of Alaska. He is currently the Chief of Juvenile Probation for the Anchorage area.

Lee is also a freelance illustrator and cartoonist, who had a comic strip, “Your Square Life” published in the Anchorage Press for six years, a total of 300 comic strips from 2001 to 2007. He produced several books, including a “Best of Your Square Life” and “Alaska!: Big and Small”, contributed a chapter to a collaborative Alaska history graphic novel, “A Native Lad”, and produced the book "Portraits" for the Alaska Immigration Justice Project and the Humanity Forum.   His work has been shown in several galleries in Alaska, including a solo retrospective at the Dorothy Page Gallery in Wasilla.  He’s presented at the Anchorage Museum and had his work published as far afield as Omaha, NB and Johannesburg, South Africa.   He's done live "visual harvesting" for a number of large audiences including the Salmon Project, the Foraker Group's Leadership Summit, and several sessions of Step-Up AK.  He's also taught many drawing classes for young children and teens across Alaska at sites such as the Homer Library, the Anchorage Library, 49 Writers, and at McLaughlin Youth Center. https://leepost.info/about

Featured Artist: Vera Brosgol

Artist Statement: Vera Brosgol was born in Moscow, Russia in 1984 and moved to the United States when she was five. She received a diploma in Classical Animation from Sheridan College, and spent many years working in feature animation but now she is writing and drawing books full-time. She likes that very much.

She has storyboarded for Laika on the feature films Coraline, Paranorman, The Boxtrolls, and Kubo and the Two Strings, as well as for Cartoon Network, Frederator and various commercial projects.

 Her first graphic novel, Anya's Ghost, was published in 2011 by First Second Books and won an Eisner Award. Her first picture book, Leave Me Alone, was published in 2016 by Roaring Brook Press and won a Caldecott Honor.

She lives in Portland, OR, and loves knitting, riding her bike, and trying not to kill her plants.  She hopes you are enjoying looking at her drawings. Discover more about the artist at https://www.verabee.com/about

Featured Artist: Arias Hoyle

Artist Statement: Arias Hoyle is an Indigenous hiphop artist from Juneau, Alaska. He incorporates his Tlingit heritage into meditative rap music, and he endeavors to bring his culture into the public eye.

Kate Boyan

Artist Statement 2021: I'm an Alaskan artist who has been creating beadwork, primarily using the bead embroidery technique, (an extremely time consuming art form) for over 40 years. Mary Choate, a Tlingit skin sewer from Haines started me out learning the basics of moccasin and mitten sewing. We would sit around the cabin and bead by propane lights. Now, so many years later, I’ve made hundreds of  items of clothing, jewelry and framed pictures, but most of the time the beadwork comes to fruition as bags. I portray and interpret the world around me using nature as my main inspiration. As a firm believer in wearable art, I like to think of the beadwork traveling here and there even when I'm stuck inside working at my studio.  When you spend as many hours at the bead table as I do, you understand that there is a state of flow you can reach in your creativity just by the act of doing, and I thrive on that feeling. I consider myself extremely lucky to be able to use a medium I love to create works of art on a daily basis.

Visit Kate's website @ https://kateboyan.blogspot.com to see more of Kate's work! 

Argent Kvasnikoff

Hello! I’m Argent Kvasnikoff and I am a Homer-born artist living in my hometown of Ninilchik. Today I’m a full-time, combination artist and cultural projects director for the Ninilchik Tribe, which is indigenous to the southern Kenai Peninsula. I also spend a lot of time in Homer because I am the current president of the Bunnell Street Arts Center and I work with lots of businesses and groups as a tribal cultural liaison.

My artworks are all inspired by thinking about aspects of culture in some way, especially thinking about them in new ways that match what people do today, because our local identity is so diverse and historically complicated that it is always difficult to explain to those who are unfamiliar with our part of the world. What I try to do is build visual connections between nuggets of cultural ideas to show that what we think defines different cultures and people are only labels, and the most important way to honor culture is making personal connections with people themselves and allowing them to define themselves too.

This year I have several projects I am working on and I am incredibly excited for the future. If you’d like more information and to read personal updates, please visit my website at argentkvasnikoff.com

Thank You!