Exhibitions: January 2023

January 13, 2023

Main gallery:

2000 Journals: Filling the Void

Art Installation & Performance by Diane Dunn

Rear gallery:

A Life Well Sewn

Ann-Lillian Schell Retrospective

Scroll down to learn more about this show

Virtual Gallery (Artwork in both gallery spaces):

Press:

Kenai Conversation: Two artists converge at art center this month
Peninsula Clarion article: ‘2000 Journals’ Convey More than Words’
Peninsula Clarion article: New year, new floor, new shows

Exhibit info:

  • Opening Reception: Thursday January 5th 5-7pm. Open to the public. Refreshments
  • Location: Kenai Art Center, 816 Cook Avenue
  • Exhibition dates: January 5 – January 28
  • Gallery hours: 12-5pm, Wednesday – Saturday

Diane Dunn

My work was once described as having the flavor of Horror Vacui. A latin-derived term meaning “fear of emptiness”.  I find great comfort in surrounding myself with a multitude of found or created objects. This body of work pushed me to great limits creatively, physically and emotionally. The images that fill this room are an outpouring of my thoughts and feelings.

The 2000 Journals: Filling the Void project was a year in the making. The mono printed images on each marks a moment on my life’s timeline during that 12 months. I can look at a journal cover and tell you how I was feeling and what was happening in my life in that moment.

The Performance and Your Participation

I will be taking up my own 500 page journal and begin the process of writing. I will be “in residence” each Wednesday for the duration of the show. I will record the thoughts and feelings that come to mind from the visual cues that surround me. 

You are invited,one at a time, to come into my journaling space, look over my shoulder and read my journal entries. I ask that you do so in silence. You the observer become the observed.

You may write in the journals, but you must return them to any square in the grid. You the observer become my collaborator in this performance. 

BIO

Diane Dunn:  I am a self taught multi media artist. Acrylic painting, collaging, book making, photography and sculpting are some of the creative roads I explore. I am drawn to installation and performance art as it incorporates the audience as a medium with which to complete the piece.

I have had my work shown at the Kerf International Exhibits, Seattle, Anchorage Museum, International Gallery of Contemporary Art under the mentorship of David Felker and  Studio Works, in Portland, Oregon. 

I call Kenai, Alaska home.

Exhibit info:

  • Retrospective curated by Zirrus VanDevere
  • Opening Reception: Thursday January 5th 5-7pm. Open to the public. Refreshments
  • Location: Kenai Art Center, 816 Cook Avenue
  • Exhibition dates: January 5 – January 28
  • Gallery hours: 12-5pm, Wednesday – Saturday

Ann-Lillian Schell

Ann-Lillian Schell (1940-2022) was born in Boston, MA and got a degree in textile design at the New Bedford Institute of Technology and later a Master’s in Art Adult Education from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Her master’s project was working with her advisor to start the Qiviut knitting cottage industry in rural Alaska. 

She had a decades long career as a geologic cartographer for the state. She loved the combination of color design, science and rigorous attention to detail involved in producing accurate maps of Alaska’s rocks. 

She had sewn her own doll clothes as a child, and continued her love affair with fabric and design as a quilter, and creator of wearable art. A lifelong learner, she constantly soaked up new techniques from quilter’s guilds, specialty magazines and workshops and quilting-related trips around the world. She showcased them well in her fibre works, vests and jackets, many of which have been exhibited over the years at the Kenai Art Center. 

Ann-Lillian was an upbeat, curious, playful and experimental artist who always had something new she was working on or interested in. Her sartorial skills were in many ways unrivaled, and her attention to detail exemplary, but the aspect we will remember her most for was the quality of her character. She volunteered often, spoke frankly always, and she cheerfully, joyfully and stoically beat cancer repeatedly. She adored and honored her own quirkiness vehemently. She was eternally in love with nature, an avid gardener and was a very loving and dedicated mother and grandmother. As her daughter Sarana said, “She had had so many health challenges this year that we were sort of girding ourselves every time she went to the hospital, which was often, but she was so indomitable, and just such a warm, loving, solid, joyful rock in our lives, for the entirety of our lives, that it’s hard to wrap our heads around it.”

Truly a life well sewn.