2026 August Director's Journal

It was my first time taking a Sitka workshop,” longtime instructor Kelly James shares as he gets the studio ready to teach.

Kelly has been coming to Sitka for a decade to teach photography, welcoming photographers of all experience levels to experiment with processes he knows deeply.

“I’ve always wanted to learn that technique,” he explains, lighting up as he talks about The Art of Photopolymer Gravure, taught by fellow longtime Sitka instructor Karen Hymer.

The change in roles feels strange, Kelly confesses.

“As a teacher, I have anxiety about what might go wrong,” he considers. “That’s mine to work through, I suppose.”

As a student?

“Taking time for myself to learn something new — It’s different. It’s exciting. I feel curious…and hopeful.”

“Karen made the experience fabulous,” Kelly appreciates. “It was wonderful — and you’re surrounded by amazing people, fellow learners all here for the same reason.”

Karen Hymer, teaching The Art of Photopolymer Gravure, 2023

The alchemy between teaching and learning is everywhere this summer.

Earlier this month, three sheep arrived on campus for a shearing demonstration at the start of Farm to Fiber with returning instructor and K–8 Create guest artist Julia Hames.

Digital soundscape artist Josephine Shetty was there to watch before heading off to work with K–8 Create Summer students, preparing to share a performance with family and friends at the culmination of camp.

Nearby, students in Jim Leggitt’s iPad Procreate drawing workshop — Jim included — emerge from the digital studio and gather around the sheep.

For a little while, digital artists, musicians, fiber artists, instructors and Sitka team members all stand together watching one of the oldest transformations there is: fleece coming off a sheep, ready to be carded and spun.

Top: Josephine Shetty with sheep

A few miles away, the Tillamook County Fair offers its own mix of practiced hands and new experiences.

Future Farmers and 4-H youth prepare animals for the show ring. Prize flowers, preserves and other handmade creations fill the exhibit hall. Upstairs, quilts and fiber work share the balcony with artwork and poetry by community members of all ages.

And in Sitka’s art area, Youth Program Director Leeauna Perry and a crew of paid high school interns welcome young people to pull up a chair and make something of their own.

Some stay for a few minutes. Others settle in.

 

The high school interns help make the art area a relaxed place where young people can create, hang out and show up as themselves — no explanations or expectations.

There’s something quietly satisfying, too, in knowing that for some of the interns, one of their first paychecks comes from helping make creativity possible for others.

Across all these summer scenes, the threads keep crossing: teachers become students, students become teachers, fleece becomes fiber, ideas become art and first creative experiences begin to shape lives in ways we can’t yet see.

Back in the studio, Kelly’s Sitka story reaches much farther back than his decade of teaching here.

Growing up in Oregon, he remembers Sitka catalogs arriving in the mail.

“I remember thinking it would be wonderful to get to go there. I never imagined I would be teaching here at Sitka,” Kelly reflects. “This is a great part of my life.”

Our 2026 workshop season continues through early October, with a handful of spaces remaining in these final weeks. 

Maybe there is something you’ve always wanted to learn too.