Country music and poety to entertain Saturday
Local talents will be performing western style music and poetry at Alice’s Champagne Palace at 5 p.m. May 18 at the annual Cowboy Cabaret sponsored by the Kachemak Bay Equestrian Association.
On the program are the Homer Ukulele Society (starring former Homer Mayor Jim Hornaday), the S-Curves (Sunrise Kilcher, Sally Wells, Sue Butler and Sharon Schultz). East End cowboy Mark Marette will be the master of ceremonies.
Other performers just show up, while more are expected to call to be included in the show, according to a key organizer Tim Quinn.
Bunnell’s Art Plates highlight membership drive
Since 1991, Bunnell Street Art Center has been the focus of creativity in Old Town at the corner of Bunnell and Main, before the new parts of Homer grew up. Once again, their art on plates is drawing members and attention.
Art Plates, created this year by numerous local artists, became available at $100+ membership levels on May 11, and those who support Bunnell Street Arts Center at higher levels, $250+, were invited to select their 2013 Art Plates earlier. But many are still available for people wishing to support the art center.
The Plate Project is coordinated by Homer potter, Ahna Iredale and sponsored by many popular local artists who generously created the plates.
On a Wing back with the shorebirds
Along with returning snow geese, dunlins and sandhill cranes comes an evening of poetry and song as part of Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival’s 10th-anniversary celebration.
The production by singer/songwriter Sunrise Kilcher reaches out to poets and musicians each year. This year, she’s putting the spotlight on the Seaside Singers, a collection of women who have kept right on singing since 1975. Alathea Clymer, one of the original members, recalled the first time Joan Evans decided to form the group.
“She looked at me and said, ‘you’re going to be in it,’ and I was. I can’t read sheet music, but I’ve been singing my whole life,” Clymer said.
Cosmic Agents plan art burning, confessional and Ottavi exhibition
A confessional covered in golden saffron fabric will sit poised on the edge of the bluff over Bishop’s Beach on First Friday.
Bunnell Street Art Center’s participatory art events allow for direct experience, courtesy of a group called “Cosmic Agents.”
The agents are talented creative people ages 35 and under who are shaping town art culture: painters, film makers, photographers, musicians, actors, yoga teachers, burlesque dancers, writers, poets, activists, farmers and anything in between.
May celebrates birds, Plein Air and watercolor society
A visual treat awaits in store for the First Friday lineup in Homer this week, from a day-long range of activities at Bunnell Street Arts Center that includes setting works of art on fire to a Plein Air gathering at Picture Alaska Art Gallery.
Art Briefs – April 24
Cosmic agents sponsor an Old Town art event Viva el Arte is an arts “happening” conceived by Homer’s Cosmic Agents, an art corps convened by Bunnell Street Arts Center, celebrating youthful energy, experiment, ideas and community. Viva el Arte is an evening event open to everyone. It follows the First Friday art opening at Bunnell [...]
Arts Briefs – April 17
Gwartnery workshop May3-5 UAA’s Kachemak Bay Campus of Kenai Peninsula College is holding registration for the upcoming spring writing workshop to be conducted by Debra Gwartney. Gwartnery is the author of the memoir Live Through This. She was a finalist for the National Books Critics Award and 2012 Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference presenter. The workshop, [...]
First Friday brings spiritualism of springtime
The First Friday circuit this week features new gallery offerings, an Intuitive Arts opening with an emphasis on springtime’s pending arrival and some fresh young works by Paul Banks Elementary school artists.
First Friday gets ready for spring with outdoor art
Art exhibits at First Friday gallery openings seem bent on helping viewers if they have winter blues and long for spring to get here for more of an outdoor life.
The March show at Ptarmigan Arts Back Room Gallery is titled Sticks and Stones and features nature inspired art from Ptarmigan artist Deb Lowney and Dan Fischer. This collaboration features media including: driftwood, beach stones, and pushki stalks. Many of the shows pieces are suitable for both indoor and outdoor display.
Women create yarn skeins to depict nature’s color pattern
If it’s possible to make yarn pop in the pinks of fireweed flowers or shine like the northern lights, a pair of Homer fiber artists have got it down.
Yarn dyed in an old fashioned process mimics the lavender of lupines, an Arctic autumn and the not-easy-to-catch blues of Kachemak Bay. Jules Joy and Sarah Browngoetz, owners of the Knitty Stash, hung in there with a business idea and it is starting to pay off. The special line of yarn, called the Alaskan Yarn Co., will soon be sold in shops in Anchorage and Fairbanks, with inquiries from around the state. They offer a variety of other yarns, including musk ox qiviut.
It took about nine months to a year to get the colors right in their speciality line, Joy said. They use commercial dyes and mingle the palette.
“I took a picture of fireweed and mixed colors until I felt I had the right mixture.” The yarn is dyed in their gallery shop, located on Main Street. They formerly operated at the Yurt Village, but grew large enough to move.
