Artist Profile
Karin Franzen
Karin Frazen is a true Alaskan original. Drawn here many years ago to work as a structural engineer, she then opened her own mushing equipment business, and now she’s a working artist continuing to redefine herself and her work.
V Rae
She goes by V Rae, the initial of her first name and then her middle name. There's something succinct but also mysterious about her moniker, as if she's pared it down to just the essential elements – and that may very well be the case.
Carol Lambert
Imagine a classical oil painting studio – wooden palettes, crinkled metal tubes of paint, jars of brushes, collapsible easels that strap to the back for hiking out to mountain meadow vistas along with a wooden box for painting en plein air at Denali National Park each summer. You'll find these age old implements in a modern, upstairs bedroom-studio in Anchorage.
Lise Hoffman
It took a latex allergy and a piece of Hawaiian real estate to begin Lise Hoffman on the road to discovering her true calling in life: glass carving.
Holly Gittlein
Holly Gittlein's Wasilla home is a testament to her "three passions" in life: art, biology and traveling the world with Rotary International to do humanitarian work.
Gina Murrow
Gina Murrow’s silk paintings of brightly colored flowers, quasi-abstract waterfalls and joyfully soaring cranes are so creative, one would never guess that she initially struggled to consider herself an artist.
Kim Marcucci
Even when Kim Marcucci isn’t standing in front of her easel, the Anchorage artist is still working. Inspiration comes from everyday life: a power plant that captures her eye, the way light filtering through leaves casts shadows on a fence. She fuses reds, greens, blues, oranges and yellows into fierce, abstract paintings that teem with exuberance – a word that describes both the artwork and the artist.
Marieke Heatwole
Marieke Heatwole hand-forges, plasma-cuts, chemically treats, pounds, welds, slices and colors metal, turning scavenged scraps into art. “I see artistic potential in almost everything around me,” she says.
Guitta Corey
Invented by the Chinese more than 2,000 years ago and made popular by Pablo Picasso in the early 20th century, the art of collage has a long and global history. Today Guitta Corey, an Anchorage-based artist, continues to explore the limitless ways of "painting with paper" in her delicate, yet bold, collages.
Karen Olanna
From the tundra and the beaches west of Nome, artist Karen Olanna gathers indigenous materials – caribou antlers, whalebones, muskox horns, and even ancient wooly mammoth bones – as she begins each journey of creating Eskimo-inspired sculptures.
Linda Beach
For many of us, a hike is just a hike – a chance to take a walk in the woods, stretch our legs, and enjoy the fresh air. For Linda Beach, a hike is a doorway to inspiration.
Kesler Woodward
"When people who don't know my work ask what I paint, I tell them I make big, abstract paintings that happen to look like birch trees," says Kesler Woodward with a laugh.
Moose Run Metalsmiths
Marlon Prazen and Tarri Thurman have welded a love for each other into their passion for metal. Tarri had been working with metal for a decade when she met Marlon, a fourth generation metalsmith. Their shared passion and talent for creating custom architectural designs from copper, brass and steel culminated in a personal and professional partnership in Moose Run Metalsmiths.
Gina Hollomon
The unbridled clay creatures poised to swoop and stride throughout Gina Hollomon’s art studio seem appropriate, as she credits her passion for clay art with an instinctual attraction.
Gail Niebrugge
Gail Niebrugge’s paintings get straight to the point – literally. Using a technique called “pointillism,” Niebrugge creates realistic scenes by painting thousands of small dots on a canvas. Viewed from afar, the dots blend together to create Alaskan scenes inspired by her own experiences.
Nancy Hausle-Johnson
After 22 years of experience in the tile industry, Nancy Hausle-Johnson still radiates an intoxicating passion for tile artistry. “It’s like Christmas opening up the kiln to see how the tile comes out. It doesn’t always turn out right and I have to try again but I’m not into mass production — I’m always coming up with new designs.”
