Local authors Erin Coughlin Hollowell and Nancy Lord, filmmaker Michael Walsh and multidisciplinary art historian Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi are among 20 statewide recipients selected to receive Individual Artist Fellowships by the Rasmuson Foundation. Each recipient receives a $25,000 prize.
The fellowships are awarded every other year to help established authors and artists develop their work or new projects of their choosing. According to the foundation, the process is very competitive, with hundreds of applications submitted each year.
Hollowell plans to use her fellowship to travel to Ireland to do research for her upcoming fourth poetry collection, which will tell the story of Bridget Cleary. Cleary was an Irish woman whose husband, believing her to be a fairy changeling, killed her in 1895.
Hollowell wants to tell the story from Cleary’s perspective. She said the story “just kind of snagged me like a fish hook,” and the more she learned about it, the more she wanted to learn. Hollowell said that there are two books about the murder and trial transcripts, but Cleary “is in none of them. She is just a passive victim.”
Hollowell also plans to use the prize to attend a conference for writers called “Poets for Science” at Kent State University.
This year’s award is Hollowell’s third fellowship from the Rasmuson Foundation. She previously received fellowships in 2013 and 2017.
Hollowell is the executive director of Storyknife Writers Retreat, a local nonprofit that supports women writers. She recently stepped down as director of the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference.
“Having two full-time jobs pretty much meant that my writing was on the back shelf,” she said.
Lord plans to use her fellowship to finish a book of essays. A prominent Alaska author and former Alaska State Writer Laureate, Lord has written essays, short stories, book reviews and a novel. She also has edited anthologies by other Alaska authors. Environmental change is a common theme in her work.
“I write a lot about climate change … that is the big thing that’s affecting everywhere in the north,” she said.
Lord previously taught creative writing at the University of Alaska Anchorage and now teaches part-time at Johns Hopkins University. She said the fellowship will let her take time off from teaching to focus on her work and attend an artist residency in Scandinavia.
She received a prior Rasmuson fellowship in 2007 and said the Rasmuson Foundation “is keeping a lot of artists in Alaska because of its support.”
“How terrific … that Homer artists got four of these fellowships and what it says about Homer being an arts community. I really feel very strongly about that … So fortunate to live in a community like this,” she said.
Lord cited the Bunnell Street Arts Center, the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference, the Homer Public Library, Homer Council on the Arts and the Pratt Museum as valuable parts of Homer.
“These institutions are all really central to our identity and supporting the artists here,” she said.
Walsh was drawn to Homer from San Francisco in 2003 specifically because of its reputation as an arts community. He cited Bunnell Street Arts Center as a local institution that “provided the space to let me do what I want.”
A selection of Walsh’s films were part of the Wild Shore New Music residency at Bunnell in September.
Walsh plans to use his fellowship for two projects: finishing development of an unnamed wide-format 70-millimeter film that he has worked on for more than a year and producing a 35-millimeter avante-garde film about memory.
Walsh said that the 70-millimeter film is “the highest resolution of any kind, celluloid or digital.” He found two copies of an original film in a building in Anchorage that was being turned into a hotel and is using that film as the basis for his project.
“I’ve always wanted to work with 70 millimeters; that’s been a dream of mine for years and years,” he said.
Walsh described the found film as “a tourist film made in the ‘80s. It’s pro oil, pro tourism.” He said it is “a really cheesy made film … a lot of beautiful shots — what I call ‘Alaska porn’ — big, huge mountainscapes … ranges of ice fields and glaciers.”
Walsh gave one copy to a film archive in Anchorage and took the other to embellish with painted and etched animations.
The narratives in Walsh’s second project are formed through memories. The film creates the illusion of a memory with many repetitive shots then shows how it changes. Walsh will work with Alaska musicians to create a soundtrack for the movie. Like the 70-millimeter film, it does not yet have a name.
This year’s Rasmuson fellowship is Walsh’s third. He previously was awarded fellowships in 2009 and 2014.
In her fellowship application, art historian and curator Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi proposed “to create an exhibit project about weather stories.”
Jackinsky-Sethi, a member of the Ninilchik Tribe, described her work as “focused on documenting Alaska Native art forms.” She has a doctorate in Art History and works on curatorial projects, art history writing and photography.
Jackinsky-Sethi said the fellowship “feels like an opportunity to explore curation as an art form.”
During the fellowship period she hopes to spend time working with other Indigenous creators, experimenting with sound design and building new exhibition projects.
Jackinsky-Sethi has more than two decades of experience in the curatorial field, currently works as program director at Native Movement and is directing an Alaska Native Museum Sovereignty initiative to build museum research opportunities for Alaska Native peoples.
A recent project was serving as a member of the curatorial team for the exhibition “Qillaniq,” which opened earlier this year at the National Gallery of Canada. Qillaniq is an Inuktitut word that Jackinsky-Sethi explained describes “when light shines off of water.” The exhibit includes work from artists in Greenland, Canada, far eastern Russia and other circumpolar regions.
Jackinski-Sethi described Homer as an “awesome creative community” and considers herself lucky to have been raised in Homer and to live here now.
“I get some of my best inspirations when I’m walking on our beautiful lands,” she said.
All four fellowship recipients cited the support that Homer provides to local artists as a resource they appreciate. The artists consider themselves lucky to be in Homer. Homer is equally lucky to have them.
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