Homer, Alaska - Arts - First Friday Events 07/30/08

Story last updated at 8:33 PM on Wednesday, July 30, 2008

First Friday Events

Art Shop Gallery

West Pioneer Avenue

New ink and watercolor originals by Gail Niebrugge

Reception, 5-7:30 p.m.

Palmer artist and author Gail Niebrugge shows her new originals of the Homer area in ink and watercolor. Along with original paintings, she also shows new prints of Cafe Cups and The Salty Dawg. Niebrugge wrote and illustrated the popular book "Alaskan Wildflowers."

Bunnell Street Arts Center

Bunnell Avenue, Old Town

Sculpture by Wendy Croskey

Mixed media work by Elizabeth Aero Irving

Reception, 6-8 p.m.; Artist's Talk, 6:30 p.m.

Wendy Croskey of Fairbanks draws inspiration for her cast bronze and aluminum sculptures from ordinary objects or from flora and fauna forms in Interior Alaska. Some pieces reference the lures and types of fishing gear found in Alaska, such as "Allure." She encases some work in resin to alter the surface appearance and disguise the industrial nature, "creating forms that imitate forest pools and ground cover," she writes in her artist's statement.

Like Croskey, the forms of nature and plant life inspire Fairbanks artist Elizabeth Aero Irving's multimedia works using wood, water-based paints, collage and gold leaf.

"As my fascination with botanical forms progresses, I find my paintings becoming more and more warm, complex and jungle-like, perhaps as a response to living through the long, cold winters of central Alaska," she writes.

Cinema 127

127 Bunnell Avenue

"The Best of the 34th Northwest Film and Video Festival"

8 p.m. $5 admission

Bunnell Street Arts Center and the Homer Film Society present avant garde and experimental films. Films include everything from the serious "Sari's Mother," about an Iraqi mother trying to get help for her 10-year-old sons with AIDS, to the silly "Operation Fish," about a special agent dispatched to rescue an abducted goldfish.

Fireweed Gallery

East Pioneer Avenue

"New Work" by Jim Brashear and

"Revisited" by Elizabeth Petersen

"Variations on a Theme," by Kachemak Bay Watercolor Society artists

Reception, 5-7:30 p.m.

Another Fairbanks artist, University of Alaska Fairbanks professor Jim Brashear interprets nature through the vehicle of clay and the ceramic processes. His Fireweed Gallery show includes large-vessel works carved and decorated with images concerning cycles inherent in both people and the natural world. Each vessel has both inner and outer lids and is suggestive of "a container within a container," he writes.

Homer artist Elizabeth Petersen's bold, colorful encaustic paintings "are her creative response to internal and external forces," she writes.

Kachemak Bay Watercolor Society artists present a small show of works created during their monthly "paint togethers." Members painted five specific objects using their own styles. Other member paintings also are on display.

Homer Council on the Arts

West Pioneer Avenue

"Paintings Past and Present" by Karla Freeman

Dance performance by Mariah Maloney

5-7 p.m., First Friday reception

Longtime Homer artist and teacher Karla Freeman's retrospective show opened last month and continues through August. As part of Kachemak Creative Art Camps for Kids, the Homer Council on the Arts collaboration with Bunnell Street Arts Center, dance instructor Mariah Maloney performs and talks about dance this Friday. Maloney also offers workshops for dancers age 14 and older 5:30-7 p.m. Aug. 4-7; the fee is $15 general admission, $12 for HCOA members.

Kachemak Bay Campus

East Pioneer Avenue

Faculty art show

Reception, 5-7 p.m.

The show by faculty at Kenai Peninsula College, Kachemak Bay Campus, features work by Ellen Chambers, Paula Dickey, Asia Freeman, Cynthia Morelli and Allan Parks.

Picture Alaska

East Pioneer Avenue

"Lucid Alaskan Images," watercolor and mixed-media

paintings by Sylva Timinskis

Reception, 5-8 p.m.

Artist's Demonstration, Saturday, 2-4 p.m.

Hatcher Pass artist Sylva Timinskis paints everything from abstracts to landscapes. Lynda Reed of Picture Alaska describes Timinskis' work as "an elusive, lucid visual Alaskan feast."

Ptarmigan Arts Back Room Gallery

East Pioneer Avenue

"The (Self)Destructiveness of Human Nature," paintings by Julia Stutzer

Saturday, 5-7 p.m.

Homer artist Julia Stutzer describes her work as "a representation of the self-destructiveness that I see as an unavoidable part of human nature," she writes. "We are strange beasts in that we are in the process of slowly self-destructing either indirectly, by destroying our environment, or directly, by our behavior toward each other and ourselves. Our instinct for survival seems to have been overcome by our inherent self-destructiveness."

Pratt Museum

Bartlett Street

"Native Ways in Changing Times"

Reception, Second Friday, Aug. 8, 5-7 p.m.

Opening next week at the Pratt Museum is a photographic exhibit that explores the hunting and fishing practices and beliefs of the Suqpiag/Alutiiq people of Nanwalek and Port Graham in the midst of political, cultural and environmental change.

Ring of Fire Meadery

Old Town, Bunnell Avenue

"Mill Works," by Don Henry

Reception, 5-7 p.m.

Homer's premiere public artist, Don Henry, has sculptures all over town, from the Homer Airport to the Homer Spit. Henry welds, bolts and attaches found objects from spoons to pistons. In his latest show, he examines his love of machinery "in forms of light, heat, projected function and energy," Henry writes.

Homer Alaska - Arts -