January Director's Journal

“With this residency, I really was interested in looking at different ocher mineral pigments,” shares California-based artist Kiyomi Fukui Nannery. She describes her explorations of the Salmon River Estuary and shows images of the red ocher she collects there. As Fukui Nannery takes us inside her recent Japanese mokunhanga block printing and collage work, the pigments she uses feel like geological collaborators in her creative process, connecting us across time and geography.

Fukui Nannery’s curiosity extends to the Neskowin Ghost Forest, a hauntingly beautiful site where ancient Sitka spruce trees—buried under sand and water for centuries—have been preserved. “The Ghost Forest is known for vivianite,” or blue ocher, Fukui explains. “I’m so excited about it. It’s called the mineral of the dead… iron and phosphate that’s merged… when organic material dies and decays. The Ghost Forest is known for spruce cones that are replaced by vivianite.”

Themes of transformation and alchemy weave through the evening as other residents share their recent work and residency experiences.

Visual artist Jeannie Hua shares collages made from joss paper—a material burned in Chinese tradition to honor ancestors—as part of a series created in response to the discovery of an unmarked Chinese immigrant gravesite in a Nevada mining town. Her greenware bones dissolve back into the soil, reanimating lives that went unrecorded, while her fish sculptures—crafted from local clay mixed with decomposition compounds—poignantly illustrate life emerging from decay. One fish, embedded with suet and birdseed, began to grow mold when left outdoors, she notes with wide-eyed wonder, the unplanned transformation a striking metaphor for renewal.

Performance-based artist Kai Hines offers a glimpse into a land art video project-in-progress filmed using trail cameras at Sitka. “This project has me thinking a lot like an animal in order to try and get some footage of them,” Hines explains. “I’m looking at their poop. I’m looking at hoof prints. I’m thinking about where I’d be if I was that animal.” Rooted in careful observation and empathy, their work reveals the intimate vulnerabilities and connections that arise when we immerse ourselves in the natural world.

Visual artist Camilla Taylor shares raw and moving reflections on the recent loss of their home, studio and artwork in the Los Angeles wildfires. “I apologize. I’m kind of out of sorts,” Taylor confides. “Just keep asking for patience and forgiveness, like all of us in Los Angeles right now.” They show work created before the fires—a series of nested blackened houses representing interior progress, a sculptural piece titled Metamorphosis incorporating “branches from my olive tree that just burned down.” Speaking to the broader themes of their practice, Taylor reflects, “Every time you reinvent yourself, you become a slightly new thing. There’s no true self. There’s just… this amalgamation of the different versions of the self.”

Despite everything, Taylor describes Sitka as uniquely vibrant. “Sitka felt like one of the most alive places I’ve ever been in my life. I’ve never experienced so much life before.”

Joshua Berman closes the evening with a deeply personal story of his father’s passing during his residency. “I got to have time with him in a very different way while I was in that space,” he shares. His photographs from that day—a bald eagle soaring, moonlight filtering through the spruce canopy, stars illuminating the sea—feel like quiet conversations between father and son, grief and wonder. In the face of profound absence, beauty and connection are present.

At Sitka, where art and ecology intertwine, these residents remind us that even amidst challenges and loss, creativity sparks renewal. As we welcome new residents and carry their stories into the new year, our thoughts are with Joshua and his family, with Camilla, and with all from the Sitka community navigating hardships. Through sharing their work and experiences, they remind us that even in grief and change, there is possibility—and that winter’s dormancy gives way to the fresh growth of spring.

In the spirit of their work, I invite you to create time and space in your own life for creativity and connection to nature. Whether through journaling and sketching, walking in quiet places or pausing to observe, these moments and practices offer chances to renew our senses of wonder and presence as we begin a new Sitka year together.

Sitka’s Residency Talks are recorded and available to view.

With gratitude for Sitka’s creative community as a source of inspiration,

Alison Dennis
Executive Director