Bunnell receives Allen Foundation grant
For the third year in a row, Bunnell Street Arts Center has been awarded a $10,000 grant from the Washington-based Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. The grant supports Bunnell’s Visual Arts Exhibition Program which showcases Alaska artists in monthly solo and group shows featuring an opening reception and artists talk on the first Friday of each month.

Smith given Combs Award
Bunnell Street Art Center’s Alex Combs Award Committee voted unanimously to award Homer painter Kathy Smith a $1,500 Alex Combs Award to support the cost of tuition, materials and workshop fee for her to study encaustic monotype printmaking with Paula Roland in Santa Fe, N.M. in November.
“Kathy’s work is constantly evolving, and this award will support that. She is focused and knows exactly what she wants to do,” the committee said. “Kathy knows the next step she wants to take in her artistic development and she demonstrated how, in terms of the progression of her work, she can do that with this workshop. She deserves this opportunity. We are excited to support her.”
The Alex Combs Award was established in 2009 to honor the late Halibut Cove artist and teacher. Private donations and proceeds from the sale of his paintings, donated by his estate, support this annual award for Alaska painters, ceramicists and sculptors to participate in art workshops and mentorships.

Oregon writer to present spring workshop
Registration has opened for an upcoming Kachemak Bay Campus spring writing workshop with Oregon writer Debra Gwartney. Gwartney is the author of the memoir “Live Through This,” a finalist for the National Books Critics Award, and a 2012 Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference presenter. Her workshop, “The Art of Scene Writing in Personal Narrative,” will be held the week-end of May 3-5 at the Kachemak Bay Campus. The focus of the workshop will be on the various elements related to the building blocks of narrative, scenes. Each participant will bring a four- to five-page scene, and as a group also study scenes from books and essays, discuss participants’ work, and write new scenes to present and workshop. Space is limited, and advanced registration is required. The fee is $185.
Gwartney also is the co-editor with Barry Lopez of “Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape,” published in 2006. She is the recipient of many fellowships, including those from Hedgebrook, the Wurlitzer Foundation, the American Antiquarian Society and the Oregon Arts Commission. She is currently on the nonfiction faculty for the master of fine arts program in writing at Pacific University and lives in Western Oregon.

Writer publishes Old Believer novel
An Oklahoma State University economics professor has written a historical novel about Russian Old Believers in the time of Catherine the Great. F. Bailey Norwood’s “Matrona’s Four Children” is available as a free Kindle ebook through Amazon.com. The plot concerns a group of Old Believers in Russia who devise a plot to usurp Catherine the Great and install their own tsar. “ ‘Matrona’s Four Children’ is a historical tale of religious, political and economic possibilities,” Bailey writes of his book. “Journey into the holiness of the human soul to witness the union of some and the division of others. … Listen to the sounds of social harmony and discord, both in the narrative and in the original music at the beginning of select chapters.”