Relief printing as a reflection of traditional indigenous carving

As a part of my artist residency at Sheldon Jackson Museum, I was invited to do a couple artist talks. As I’ve continued my relief printing practice, I’ve felt a correlation between relief carved prints and more traditional indigenous carving practices. The connection was brought to the front of my mind after attending Pacific Northwest Aleut Council’s culture camp last year where I took part in a mask carving class. I loved the class, carving masks, and also recognized a connection in the carving to what I was already doing as a relief printmaker. Even the tools were the exact same as the ones I used at home for carving relief print blocks.

For my talk, I delved into that connection and how indigenous artists have incorporated new mediums and materials into artistic practice as trade and availability bring them in. I also take a look back at the origins of relief printing and how it’s a truly ancient method of art-making. Watch it above!

“Sitka Wild” | A Brave Heart Volunteers Auction buoy

The last couple years I’ve watched as artists in Sitka painted these hard plastic buoys that get auctioned off every September to support Brave Heart Volunteers, a nonprofit organization offering free social, emotional, and educational support services in Sitka, Alaska. Their mission is to provide compassionate care, companionship, respite, and education to those facing illness, isolation, end of life, and grief. Both of my grandparents spent the last few years of their lives at the Pioneer Home in Sitka so their mission is important to me, and beyond that, I wanted to make sure I was giving back to the community that I was invited into as an artist in residence. So before I flew up to Sitka in early June I messaged them and asked if I could paint a buoy for the fundraiser this year and they said yes!

For my buoy I decided to celebrate some of my favorite flora and fauna in the Sitka area. On one side of the buoy there are undersea creatures and plant life, and on the other side are topside creatures and plants. These buoys aren’t the soft, inflatable kind you’re probably more familiar with. This is made of hard, hollow plastic so they’re easy to paint on but relatively lightweight.

For the undersea side I included salmon, kelp, a seal, sea star, and an otter mama and baby.

For the land side I painted a slug, ermine, mussels (which count as undersea, but they’re topside for low tide!), salmonberry, ravens, lupine, and a bald eagle.

The buoys are hung outside downtown over the summer and then they’ll be auctioned off in September! Typically they’re auctioned online in a silent auction but this year there’s going to be a live auction event as well.

It was incredibly fun to be able to paint a buoy this year and I would 100% do it again. It was a cool design challenge to paint on a sphere and I actually finally started using Posca pens for some of the detail work and definitely understand the hype.

If you’re in Sitka, keep an eye out downtown for it to get hung from one of the light poles!

“Sea Kin” - a print to support the sheldon Jackson Museum Alaska Native Artist Residency

When I applied for Sheldon Jackson Museum’s Alaska Native Artist Residency Program in December I pitched a project inspired by the Tacoma Wayzgoose Festival here in Tacoma. Every year Tacoma Wayzgoose accepts 12 artists to carve large scale 2x3ft linoleum relief blocks which are then printed live at the festival, and one print by each artist is raffled off to support the festival. My idea for the residency was to spend the residency carving a large linoleum block, then printing it with a steamroller as a community event, and selling the prints produced with proceeds going directly to the Native Artist Residency program. At the time I pitched the idea, federal funding for the program was in place, but in the few weeks leading up to my residency the administration pulled the residency program’s funding— funding which they’d been receiving for 30 years. Thankfully a private organization stepped in to fund this year’s residencies, but looking to the future with National Endowment for the Arts funding in jeopardy, I’m hoping the sales from these prints can help, in some small way, to continue the residency program.

This print was inspired by a dream I had shortly before leaving for Sitka. In the dream I swam all the way from Tacoma to Sitka, then upon arriving in Sitka I was out on a spit of land across the water from town and a huge tsunami wave tossed me into the sea. I was tumbling underwater, the ocean was opaque from the wave kicking up silt, and I realized I couldn’t tell up from down to find the surface and was going to drown, alone beneath the waves. I woke up in a start— it was one of those almost-too-real dreams that had you wake with your heart racing. Later that day I was ruminating on the dream and realized that while I felt alone underwater because I couldn’t see anything, I wasn’t actually alone. I was surrounded by kin: Salmon guiding me to the headwaters of a stream, kelp growing towards upwards to guide me to the surface, seals who could pull me along.

I spent the first week of my residency carving the linoleum, then we got our steamroller rental delivered and printed! The steamroller was a little smaller than the ones we use for Wayzgoose so I wasn’t sure if it would be heavy enough, but it worked perfectly and we ended up with nine prints. So many people came out to watch and it was such a blast getting to do another steamroller print!

If you’re interested in purchasing one of these prints, get in touch with Friends of Sheldon Jackson Museum, they’re available with a minimum donation of $250.00. Huge thanks to the Friends of Sheldon Jackson and the team at Sheldon Jackson Museum for coming on board with this (possibly) wacky idea— steamroller printing was something I don’t think had been done in Sitka before, and I’m grateful they trusted my vision!

If you don’t want one of the prints but still want to donate to the residency program you can do that here! It’s a great program that brings several Alaska Native artists and craftsmen to Sitka to create work for three weeks in the summer. They also do lots of other programming throughout the year focused on Alaska Native culture bearers, researchers, and artists. And if you’re interested in applying for the residency program, the application typically opens up in December!

Tacoma Wayzgoose 2025

This year’s Tacoma Wayzgoose theme was “make some noise.” The email plopped in my inbox sharing the prompt for hopeful steamroller artists sharing, “This year's steamroller print theme celebrates the music of Tacoma. Think of all the great artists who've called Tacoma home, all the great venues, all the great music the city makes (foghorns and seagulls!), the music of languages, the music of everyday life...” I took that last section as my inspiration, ruminating on the music of Tacoma, what it’s like to close your eyes in the middle of the city and listen. What is the song of Tacoma?

“Where’s that confounded bridge?” Led Zeppelin’s The Crunge’s final lyrics ask. What is a song’s bridge? A musical change of pace, intended to provide contrast to the rest of the composition. Here in the Northwest we’re the bridge. We’re not the fancy metropolitan city of Seattle, we’re not a densely wooded small town or coastal hamlet, and we aren’t rolling fields of agricultural land. We’re something different. Something gritty and creative. We’ve got a little bit of funk to us, and I’m not just talking about the aroma. We strut to the beat of our own rhythm. Blue collar, grunge, and art all steeped together under the watchful eye of our namesake peak.

And then there’s the bridge, or should I say bridges. We’re perched on our peninsula jutting out into the Puget sound, anchored on west and east by bridges— Tacoma Narrows, Murray Morgan, and the E 21st St bridge.

In this piece I wanted to share a poem about the music of Tacoma, it’s people, it’s land, the interweaving of everything we hear when we close our eyes in the middle of the city. Tacoma has birthed many amazing artists, some nationally known, like Neko Case, some with cult Tacoma followings, like Girl Trouble— but I like to think we are all a part of the song of Tacoma, being sung throughout the ages as we build our lives between bridges in this little gritty city, “a dusty old jewel on the south Puget Sound.”

I wanted to create something that had a similar visual style to last year’s Wayzgoose print, so they could hang together and be like a sort of diptych. They both have the same black border and if you hang the Home Sweet Tacoma one to the left of this one they’re sort of geographically accurate with the port east of the Murray Morgan Bridge.

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The few original steamroller prints I had sold out in ten minutes but I made 20x30 and 16x24 reproduciton giclee prints of this one like I did for last year’s steamroller print so those are in the shop!

New art acquisition: Racheal Jackson

If you call stuff you buy an “acquisition” it makes you sound very fancy and highfalutin. I’m an art collector, folks.

I want to introduce you to one of my favorite people: Racheal Jackson. You might know her better as @banyanbridges on Instagram or from her hit Magnolia show Artfully Designed. She’s renowned for her bright, colorful, and playful murals. She has the best vibes, both online and offline, and watching her flourish as an artist has been such a wonderful thing to witness.

When Racheal announced that she was selling these big cut-out sculptural squiggles, it was just before my birthday and I decided to give myself a squiggle. I knew exactly where it needed to go. I absolutely love this slat wall that divides my studio space from our living room— it defines each space while still letting light through in both directions. I’ve always wanted art on this slat wall, but I also didn’t want something like a canvas or framed art that not only would block the light, but you would also see the “ugly side” of the art when looking at the slat wall from the studio side. This piece has no such issues! And oh my god do I love it so much.

Knowing Racheal, it’s fun to look up and see a bit of my friend living here in my house. She actually bought one of my Home Sweet Tacoma steamroller prints so we’ve now swapped art and both have each other’s work hanging in our homes, which I love. It’s always a funny phenomenon, one I notice often at art markets and craft fairs, that the artists and makers themselves are the ones who find themselves shopping at the other vendors’ booths. It’s hard not to when there are such amazing folks around you making beautiful things.

support your artist friends,

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