At any given time, artist Megan Frost is in her home studio producing multiple pieces of work simultaneously — paintings, drawings, mixed media collage, jewelry, fiber art and more. Inspired by the landscape around her, specifically nature and light, as well as images she sources from reference materials, she enjoys using bold colors and portraying juxtaposing themes, often galactic themes.

“I like to do space age, really modern, sci-fi background over classic or traditional, old-school images, juxtaposing the future with the past,” she said. “I do a lot of this in my work, melding scrap wood and screen-print ink, acrylic paint and metallic paints.”

In her four-piece work, “Slide Collage 1-4,” currently on display in Homer Council on the Arts’ “Fun With 5×7” exhibit, Frost recovered four vintage projector slides, incorporated foil to reflect light behind each, and created a decorative border around them. The four slides that show scenes of a cabin and people tidepooling across Kachemak Bay are now each their own individual piece in relation to one another.

Also exhibited at HCOA is Frost’s “Boat Collage 1,” made from acrylic paint, pen and ink, paper, foil tape and sealer and created by her desire to showcase a quintessential Homer scene beyond mountains and trees.

“I’ve painted a lot of mountains and trees and for this one, I knew I wanted to create a collage that represented a part of life here other than nature,” she said. “I had the idea for this piece for a while and then I came across some great reference material. I started with blank paper, painted it, drew with acrylic paints, pen and ink and colored pencil. It’s basically a collage and a painting.”

Her solo exhibit, “My Fresh Works,” opened at the Homer Public Library in September and includes an untitled painting that depicts mountains in the background, with a view of the bay, hill, pushki and trees in the foreground, with the entire piece behind a veil of raindrops.

One of the first pieces she created after moving to Homer in 2018, Frost painted this landscape scene on top of an old sign from a record shop she and her former husband owned in Fairbanks. Frost spent years building layers of paint on top of the sign before she was ready to move from the background to the subject matter, a common aspect of her creative process.

“A lot of my time on my paintings is spent building up the background, building up enough layers as a background to create atmosphere and depth,” she said. “I might work on a background for a year until I get it exactly how I want it. I have a lot of pieces I’ve created through the years where I built up the background and am waiting for the right image to come.

“I call these basecamps. I’ve got my gear and I’m at the bottom of the mountain, just chilling for a while before I begin the climb. After the background comes the work of putting the subject matter on it, and that part I can do quickly, like the mountains and trees in this painting.”

Also at the library is another untitled piece featuring a young woman riding a white bear. This smaller painting was inspired by the book “East of the Sun, West of the Moon,” a Norwegian fairytale about a heroine, a white bear and a troll, among other characters.

“The artwork in the children’s book is stunning and I wanted to pattern a piece after this,” she said. “I enjoy taking what I find to be iconic images and re-creating them over a different kind of background, so this piece is my take on this older original image.”

Frost’s creativity was nurtured from a very young age. Born in Germany and raised in the U.S. Southwest, her family lived in Panama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and traveled the country for a time living in a camper. She spent her free time drawing from the world around her and from books, magazines and reference materials she found at the libraries she frequented as her military family moved around. She also grew up in a family of singers.

When she was a teenager, her family moved to Florida where she sang and played music. In her 20s, she surfed, waited tables to put herself through college and put her drawing and painting aside to focus on singing and songwriting. After taking a break from school, she returned to study art and in 2011, she received a B.A. in Fine Art.

“Having shifted from visual art to music during this time, I realized that what I really wanted to do was my art — painting and drawing,” she said. “Art school forced me to be a working artist again, which was great.”

When she was 29 and looking for a change, Frost and her former partner moved to Fairbanks. They purchased a record shop, buying and selling music, and any records that were scratched and could not be sold became a canvas for Frost’s paintings. There, Frost painted every day, sold her paintings and created commissioned pieces, including murals around town.

In 2018, she and her family moved to Homer where she longed to make art, but was limited on both physical space to create and time, as she was working and raising her three small children. Now a single mother and a full-time working artist, Frost works out of her home studio, working on anywhere from 50 to 100 pieces at a time.

“I work on as many things as I can at a time and am constantly rotating the different materials I use — vinyl, cardboard, paper, wood and rocks,” she said. “In Fairbanks, I completed a painting a day on average because I worked on batches. Now it takes me much longer and I have a lot of pieces in play at any given time.”

Frost is currently working on several series, one on roller skating and another on music. A throwback to her time in Fairbanks, she is painting on old vinyl records.

“I’m having a lot of fun trying to figure out how to paint on cut vinyl with grooves,” she said. “Vinyl doesn’t absorb paint, so you can pool paint on it in certain ways and I love the way it looks with thick layers of paint and paint bubbles. It’s important to me to have fun while I’m making things and not take myself too seriously. I work very organically, having an idea or a concept in mind, but then life happens or your materials go their own way. It’s nice to have intention, but it’s good to allow for freedom to let happy art accidents happen.”

In addition to her two current exhibits on display through December, she will be showing in a solo exhibit at Grace Ridge Brewing in December.

“When I lived in Fairbanks, I had an outlet for my work, so I was working and showing and selling every day,” she said. “When we moved here, the pandemic happened, so the timing was a challenge and I didn’t have that same outlet, so I’ve just been working flat out on production. Now I think I’m at a point where I have enough work and am comfortable showing it. I feel like I’m really emerging right now and am ready to more fully present my work to the community.”

Find Frost’s work at the Homer Public Library and Homer Council on the Arts now through December, in a fundraiser auction at Fireweed Academy’s Harvest Festival on Nov. 15, and at her upcoming exhibit at the brewery in December. Her wearable art is available year-round at 51 North and seasonally on the Spit at the Sea Lion Gallery. Find her online @megarvikingprincess.

“Long lining” is a collage of pen and ink, colored pencils, and acrylic paint made by Homer artist Megan Frost in the summer of 2024 and is on display in Homer Council on the Arts’ “Fun with 5×7” exhibit in Homer, Alaska. Photo provided by Homer Council on the Arts

”Songbirds” is a pen and ink, acrylic paint, and washi tape collage made by Homer artist Megan Frost in the summer of 2024. It is currently on display in her solo exhibit at the Homer Public Library in Homer, Alaska. Photo provided by Megan Frost