Two years ago, when Homer artist Abigail Kokai unveiled her exhibit, “Panda Mick’s RV Park & Stay-In,” she introduced the community to her fabricated world of little fuzzy-haired characters manifested into human-size form. Now, in her latest exhibit installation, on display at Bunnell Street Arts Center, she is expanding on this first cast of characters with “Aelon Funk.” This fictional space character is breaking in his new-to-him spaceship and embarking into outer space on extraterrestrial travels in the hopes of finding the fountain of youth.

“Located on the fringe of civilization in the remote coastal town of Homer, Alaska, Panda Mick’s was the smallest RV Park around,” Kokai said. “There, you could enter an alternative universe which provided shelter from the storm of reality and enter a time when feelings, friendships and freedom were much simpler, and everything was tactile. Your favorite toy was a stuffed animal, and it went everywhere with you. And that handmade quilt on your bed had magical powers against monsters or bad days.”

Through her collection of small sculpture, air-blown inflatables and paintings, Kokai constructed a universe of creature comforts.

With each exhibit taking two years to create, Kokai refers to “Aelon Funk” as a second edition to “Panda Mick’s.” In this show, the main character, at the age of 93 wins a 40-billion-dollar lottery and decides to travel the galaxy in a vintage spaceship.

“This show is really a deep character story with his current travels into the universe, but the concept of this show is “Panda Mick’s Universe,” Kokai said. “The character, Aelon, born Ray Charles Eppsaelon Brown, is a construct of many very old men that I’ve known and is a Black man that was born in Kansas in 1925.”

Constructed from dark green fleece, Kokai did not want Aelon’s race to be his identity.

“It’s there if you want to see it, or you might not notice it,” she said. “As a floppy-legged little green spaceman plush, he’s cute and goofy, but if you’re willing to take a minute to wonder what his life has been like as a human, his story carries a lot of weight. There’s a photo album/scrapbook of his life, with a lot of Forrest Gump style overlaps of historical moments and humor as well as reminders of racial prejudice. Then, departing America and Earth, there’s Aelon’s somewhat vintage spaceship, the Funkship, the map for his wayfinding in the cosmos, which resembles a turntable with plotted known superclusters, along with fictional planets and galaxies from all our popular sci-fi movies and TV shows.”

In addition to Aelon himself, his spaceship and the items he travels with, there are other elements of the human-ish scale installation intended to transport exhibit visitors to an alien environment. This includes 3D imagined life-forms, 2D landscapes, other characters and illustrative paintings of Aelon’s explorations.

Kokai sees her characters as existing in their own space, on their own and with their own personalities.

“The family of characters represent a lot of things that I miss or don’t have within my own family,” she said. “I pull a lot of the best things from my relationships with my friends, and they have a lot of qualities from people that I know or have known. The thing about making people as these plush dolls is that they are a soft and non-threatening method of addressing some heavy topics. You don’t immediately see them as “the other.” They evoke humor and are hopefully relatable. They seem to imprint on viewers in their own ways, and that is fine by me. It’s tapping that wonder in all ages and that is what I want for viewers and other makers. I don’t think of my dolls as my own family, but as their own family that I get to observe and laugh about. All I’m doing is illustrating the actions they are taking and the lives they are living.”

While “Panda Mick’s” was created during the pandemic and Kokai considers it to be more of a comfort show, she views “Aelon Funk” to be more of what she views as a callback show.

“This exhibit harkens back to my early adult influences and lingering lust for magic by making magic,” she said. “It’s pretty, cute and fluffy, with nods to illustration and 3D illustration influences from my undergrad time at the Columbus College of Art & Design. It was also influenced by the magic I experienced of elaborate miniature train holiday displays, animated retail window displays and science museum exhibit designs, as well as theater lighting, bold graphic designs and the visual texture of fibers and fabrics in illustration.”

An exhibiting artist telling and illustrating stories of communities through the medium of quilts for the past 10 years, Kokai’s plush art doll creations are a departure from that creative focus.

“The pandemic made us all a little different and for me, it restructured my definition of community into a miniature and manageable family of fictional characters,” she said. “This show contains more details than the first Panda Mick’s show. With the first show it was an experiment. Even I doubted that this qualified as art and not a hobby. It felt more like therapy, and I wasn’t sure if people would get my whimsy.”

Inspired by Boober, a Jim Henson Muppet character that was featured on the television series “Fraggle Rock” that ran 1983 to 1987, Kokai was curious to see how the community would respond to her pop art exhibit.

“I was flexing all of my skills and intentionally punching up the tiny little details and it was like proving to myself that this stuff that is my own and all the things I love is also art,” she said. “Having Aelon travel into outer space required the magic of imagination for me to come up with it all. For the photo album/scrapbook, I made a posable wire frame version of Aelon and a lot of tiny clothes to pose him in for all the photos, then I photographed him and even gouache painted some before Photoshopping him into photos. There was a lot of content and research packed into that, almost as much was packed into the Universe map that took several months of research.”

With this exhibit, Kokai’s cast of characters has grown to 11 dolls, all stemming from her imagined family tree based around Boober. With a “where is he now?” kind of storyline, all her dolls possess a slight resemblance to Muppet characters, although their personalities are drawn from individuals Kokai knows or has known.

“I placed Boober as a single parent and created his three children — Tuber, Goober and Bean, along with some adult nieces and nephews — Yella, Skwanda and Half-Paint, a grandma, G-Diddy and some family friends — Bobcat, Andorra, Choo-Choo and Aelon.”

On display at Bunnell through December, Kokai is already planning the concept for her next edition of “Panda Mick’s,” a play on an art amusement park from the 1980s — “Luna Luna”.

The recipient of the 2023 Connie Boochever Visual Arts Fellowship from the Alaska Arts & Culture Foundation, awarded the 2023 Artist of the Year from Homer Council on the Arts and a Rasmuson Foundation award recipient, Kokai said her short-term goals include taking some time to rest and relax. Her longer-term goals include continuing to exhibit, building an art studio and working collaboratively with other artists. She would also like to participate in artist residencies as she has in the past, including the month-long residency at Bunnell in the spring of 2014 which ultimately prompted her move to Homer.

“I came to Homer for that residency and stayed a couple of extra days to add some extra details on the quilts we’d made and that turned into a couple of weeks and then a job opportunity came along for the summer,” she said. “One day I made a fabric whale for fun, and it sold immediately and a few months later I launched Homer Whales LLC and I’ve been doing that ever since. A lot of people here are multi-faceted, performing very different jobs and interests on a regular basis. I think that greatly contributes to the creative energy within this community and motivates me to really get into the depths of whatever it is that I’m making. Homer is a cosmic hamlet of educated curiosity.”

Visit Kokai’s exhibit, “Aelon Funk” at Bunnell Street Arts Center through December. Her whales can be found in shops downtown and on the Spit, as well as in her Etsy storefront, https://www.etsy.com/shop/HomerWhalesLLC. Find her online at @homerwhales on Instagram and Facebook and @kokaithefabricator on Instagram.

The Funkship flies over floating rocks in Abigail Kokai’s multimedia exhibit at Bunnell Street Arts Center in Homer, Alaska, on display through December, featuring her fictional space character, Aelon Funk, and his extraterrestrial travels. Photo provided by Abigail Kokai

Artist Abigail Kokai (center) with friends Rachael Brennan (left) and Karianna Ford (right) attend the opening of her December mixed media exhibit, centered around her fictional character Aelon Funk and his extraterrestrial travels, at Bunnell Street Arts Center on Friday, Dec. 6, 2024, in Homer, Alaska. Photo provided by Abigail Kokai