Staff report

Homer and Ninilchik art historian Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi and Homer-based artist Sarahlily Stein are among 12 Alaska artists or collectives to receive project funding from the Ursa Major Fund.  In a press release, Bunnell Street Arts Center  announced the awarding of  $60,000 total to the twelve projects for 2026. This is the first award cycle of the Ursa Major Fund, an annual grant program for Alaska artists administered by Bunnell Street Arts Center as a Regional Regranting Program of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. This year’s awards reach Alaska communities in Aleknagik, Anchorage, Douglas, Fairbanks, Homer, Juneau, Kodiak, Kotzebue, and St. Paul, Aleutians and Pribilof Islands. The Ursa Major Fund supports artist-led, risk-taking, public-facing projects that inspire curiosity, engagement, dialogue and respect for cultural integrity by Alaska artists and artist groups. 

Panelists of this first cycle of the Ursa Major Fund were Ashley DeHoyos Sauder, curator of DiverseWorks and an organizer of a full range of visual, performing, and public arts programming; Nicolas Galanin, Lingít/Unangax̂ multi-disciplinary artist whose work expands and refocuses the intersections of culture, centering Indigeneity through concept, form, image, and sound; Keren Lowell, a visual artist with a bachelor of arts  in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Northern Colorado and a master of fine arts  in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Juan Manuel Silverio, a curator, writer, and arts administrator invested in championing and building community with artists, curators, creatives, and cultural workers from LGBTQ+, Black, Indigenous, and communities of color across Los Angeles (Tovangaar) and beyond.


 

Grant Recipients and Project Descriptions

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Beverly Cole – Kodiak, Alaska 

Creative Circles: No-Cost Art Workshops for Seniors & Community Access Fund, $1,000 

Bev of Heart Rock Club is a printmaker and multimedia artist whose work is rooted in curiosity and building an accessible, inclusive community through art-making. 

She will offer free hands-on art workshops exploring printmaking techniques at the Kodiak Senior Center and have a Community Access Fund available to help remove financial barriers for participants in her other community workshops. 

Beverly Cole – Kodiak, Alaska (Photo provided)

Desiree Hagen and Christina Nelson – Kotzebue

Alaska Papermaking in the Northwest Arctic, $1,000 

Desiree Hagen and Christina Nelson will host free workshops in Kotzebue to connect Northwest Arctic residents with the natural world using local plants for papermaking, dye and pigment-making. 

Hagen is a papermaker and visual artist, and Nelson is a multi-media artist and wildlife biologist.

Desiree Hagen and Christina Nelson. (Photo provided)

Sasha Kramer, Chase Farber and alistair goodson smith – Anchorage, Alaska 

Where Worlds Meet – an immersive, interactive, traveling art exhibit, $1,000 

This multi racial, gender expansive, disabled art collective invites others to a day of art, reflection, and connection in Anchorage. 

Explore worlds, build relationships, and share food while experiencing other worldly art inspired by the group’s various ancestral lineages. 

Ethan/Kayaaní J Lauesen – Fairbanks, Alaska 

The Dream Show, $1,000 

Denaakk’e Koyukon Athabaskan and Lingit artist Ethan/Kayaani J Lauesen creates paintings, prints and drawings as an intimate response to public perceptions of their Indigenous and Queer identities. 

They will create new prints about dream space and curate a juried show open to artists throughout Alaska about artwork that explores dreams. 

Ethan/Kayaaní J Lauesen (Photo provided)

Amber Webb – Curyung, Aleknagik, Alaska 

Traditional Ceremony for Anna Yukluk, $4,000 

Amber Webb is a Curyung tribal member of primarily Yup’ik and Norwegian ancestry who resides at Aleknagik Lake.

She will create a caribou tooth belt and carve a ceremonial mask, then hold a ceremony at Kanakanak Beach near where Anna Yukluk was killed at Kanakanak Orphanage in 1929 to tell her story, dance her mask and belt, and and send her mask into the unseen.

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Amber Webb (Photo provided)

Sarahlily Stein – Northwest Alaska 

Selawik Refuge Arts Programming for Communities Served by Selawik National Wildlife Refuge, $4,000 .

Sarahlily Stein is a Homer-based visual artist and naturalist who will offer arts workshops that blend botany, visual art, and local environmental knowledge for rural communities served by Selawik National Wildlife Refuge.

 

Sarahlily Stein (Photo provided)

Nadia Sethi – Homer, Alaska 

A Love Letter to Our Glaciers, $4,000 

The Alaska Native Museum Sovereignty program is a grassroots collective of Alaska Native scholars, curators, artists and museum professionals directed by Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi, an art historian, museum consultant and member of the Ninilchik Native Tribe. 

A Love Letter to Our Glaciers is an ongoing research project that explores relationships to glaciers by conducting research and documentation at local glaciers, inviting artists to create new work, and writing about the research to share in the digital journal Forging.

Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi. (Photo provided)

Garrett Iĝayux̂Pletnikoff & Hannah Atsaq Zimmerman (Tukuuludaa) – St. Paul, Aleutians & Pribilof Islands

Sirgiiyax̂ kayux Laaqudam quhmaa (Sergie and the White Seal), $4,000 

Tukuuludaa, a Bering Sea-based design and education collective, envisions a sustainable economic future for coastal Western Alaska grounded in handcraft and generations of Indigenous biocultural knowledge. 

The collective retells Rudyard Kipling’s “White Seal” Jungle Book from a modern and Unangan perspective using art, Indigenous language and an audio-book in association with an art installation that showcases characters from the forthcoming novel Sirgiiyax̂ kayux Xulustaakam Quhmaa, Sergie and the White Seal, crafted from local materials and using traditional methods from St. Paul Island. 

Garrett Iĝayux̂Pletnikoff and Hannah Atsaq Zimmerman (Photo provided).

Jennifer Younger – Juneau-Sitka

Intertwined: Returning To Our Roots, an exhibit in Aan Hit, $10,000 

Jennifer Younger is an award-winning Tlingit artist of the Eagle/Drum House of Klukwan, raised in Yakutat and now based in Sitka.

She will curate an exhibit highlighting cultural revitalization of Yakutat Tlingit spruce root weaving with an exhibition, free talks, hands-on workshops and an artist market to foster intergenerational learning and mentorship in collaboration with Tlingit master weaver Jennie Wheeler and her students. 

Jennifer Younger (Photo provided)

Klara Maisch and Katie Ione Craney – Fairbanks, Alaska 

Gulkana: An Online Visual Archive of One Glacier and Its Surroundings, $10,000 

Visual artist, Klara Maisch, and interdisciplinary artist and researcher, Katie Ione Craney, will create an archive as a collective memory of place through imagery that explores human and more-than-human connections with C’ulc’ena’ Łuu’ / Gulkana Glacier. 

Through community contributions and collective storytelling, the project aims to challenge colonial narratives and reveal more expansive ways of thinking and being in relation with the glacier. 

Klara Maisch & Katie Ione Craney (Photo provided).

Rachael Juzeler – Douglas, Alaska 

Igniting Creative Thought – Constructing a Glass Furnace in Collaboration with Community & Art Glass Mentors, $10,000 

Rachael Juzeler is a multifaceted artist with a practice rooted in craft, specializing in kiln-worked glass, mosaic, public art and creative reuse. 

Rachael will construct a glass furnace at her studio on Douglas Island to advance her innovative glass work and create a space to invite Alaskan and international artists to join in artwork creation.

Rachael Juzeler (Photo provided)

Tamara Wilson – Fairbanks, Alaska 

2026 Summer Season of The Lemonade Stand, $10,000 

Multidisciplinary artist Tamara Wilson created The Lemonade Stand, a mobile art trailer, to foster creative interaction, reach unexpected audiences and break down perceived barriers to access and viewing of art. 

Wilson supports and connects a range of creatives across Alaska with Alaska’s diverse population by parking The Lemonade Stand in different communities and at locations that can reach many people, such as public spaces, non-profit organizations, public schools, farmers’ markets, and established creative hubs. 

Tamara Wilson (Photo provided)

About Bunnell Street Arts Center 

Bunnell Street Arts Center’s mission is to spark artistic inquiry, innovation and equity to strengthen the physical, social and economic fabric of Alaska. Through programs like the Visual Arts Exhibitions, Artist Residencies, Artist in Schools, workshops, concerts and community events, Bunnell is a vibrant hub for the Homer community, and a valued arts industry leader in Alaska.

About the Ursa Major Fund & the Regional Regranting Program 

The Ursa Major Fund is funded through the generous support of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Regional Regranting Program. The Regional Regranting Program was established in 2007 to recognize and support the movement of independently organized, public-facing, artist-centered activity that animates local and regional art scenes but that lies beyond the reach of traditional funding sources. The program is administered by non-profit visual art centers across the United States that work in partnership with the Foundation to fund artists’ experimental projects and collaborative undertakings. 

For more information, please visit https://warholfoundation.org.