From crayons to showcase

Homer youth Madilyn Illg enjoys exploring her creative side and has been making art for as long as she can remember. One of her drawings is currently on display in the Jubilee art exhibit at Homer Council on the Arts.

“Dive” is Illg’s colored pencil seascape that took her two weeks to create and was made during her high school art class in an assignment called Community Drawing.

“The imagery depicts a sea otter in the middle of its plunge to the ocean floor, a small crab peeking over a rock and long strands of bull kelp filtering sunlight through the water,” Illg said. “The assignment was that it had to be a candid scene, have interaction and a setting.”

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She chose to show this piece because she had never tried to draw a sea otter before, and is especially proud of the challenge it presented and the result.

Born and raised in Homer, Illg draws, paints, sculpts and work with ceramics. For the past two years, she has taken the Homer High School ceramics class and this is her first year taking the high school art course.

“Recently I’ve been sculpting jewelry holders, and for my ceramics I do a ton of decorative sculpting,” she said. “A few of my mugs aren’t very good for practical use because of this, but I really enjoy sculpting because it is a way I can get my ideas down almost exactly as I imagined them to be into a 3D object that I can hold and see. It really helps me focus my creativity into things I want to create. My favorite part of the ceramics class at Homer High is decorative sculpting.”

She also plays the piano and enjoys photography.

“Although I don’t have a professional camera, I love photography,” she said. “I’ve been able to capture a lot close up pictures of bugs, mainly honeybees, small plants, as well as different landscapes around Homer just on my iPhone.”

Illg credits her family for providing numerous role models to nurture this part of her life.

“I’ve grown up around all sorts of creative people, including my parents who do different kinds of painting, an uncle who is a professional tattoo artist, and an aunt who does all sorts of art from painting and drawing to cookie designs,” she said. “I’ve been drawing and creating art since the moment I could hold a crayon.”

With a fondness for drawing and painting wildlife and, more specifically and most recently, birds, she often takes a pen and notebook with her on hikes and adventures to sketch out ideas for art pieces. For her drawings, she prefers to work with colored pencils and when painting, watercolors and acrylics. While Illg plans to continue on with her art as a hobby to see where it takes her, she is for now grateful to be surrounded by beautiful landscapes that inspire her.

“Living here inspires and nurtures my creativity because I’m always hanging out in nature, either on beaches on the Spit or on local trails,” she said. “The amount of wildlife I see in Homer is amazing and is where I get most of my inspiration from.”

She has also long been inspired by Homer artists Felicity Rae Jones and Kim McNett.

“When I was younger, I remember going to the Nutcracker Faire and seeing all the art that Felicity had made,” she said. “The ones that stood out to me were the animals with all the other tiny doodles making up their shape. I’ve always loved animals, and a lot of her work was just that.”

Illg’s most recent painting class was a watercolor class with McNett.

“I’ve always known what watercolor was, but for the longest time I would always see it as a messy paint that I could never really control how I wanted it to go,” she said. “After seeing Kim’s watercolor paintings that almost looked like photographs to me, I had a new kind of respect and interest for watercolor. After taking just one of her classes, I’ve finally been able to enjoy the technique of watercolor.”

While the young artist enjoys exploring her own creative side, she also views creativity in the broader sense for what it brings to a community like Homer.

“I think art is important in our community and lives in general because it inspires people, and with an already close-knit community, it can tell many different stories from different perspectives which can bring people closer,” she said. “My creativity is important to me because I feel like it brings me closer to who I am as a person in that it is uniquely mine and it makes up a huge part of me and my life.”

Community members can view Illg’s work alongside the work of other Homer youth through April 30 at Homer Council on the Arts. HCOA is open Monday through Saturday from 1-5 p.m. at 355 W. Pioneer Avenue.