November Director's Journal

As autumn settles in—after the energy of workshop season and the Art Invitational—I confess a gravitational pull toward introversion, a natural instinct to turn inward and work in hibernation mode in preparation for the new year.

With so many alarms sounding in the world, the temptation feels especially strong this year. It’s easy to justify hunkering down as a form of self- and organizational care—to focus on the next grant draft or budget forecast, working quietly through the winter to safeguard what matters.

When I sit down to write about all Sitka is accomplishing, however, I am reminded that this work was never meant to be done alone.

Through our collaboration with Literary Arts Fellow Adam Swanson, Sitka welcomed its first Writers’ Residency cohort, bringing together regional and national authors for focused time to create new work and connect. The program widens Sitka’s circle of creative refuge and opens pathways for new and vital voices to find their way here.

Partnerships with schools and Tribal communities are building creative connections across cultures and generations. In step with Ada Limón’s visits to Nestucca K-8 and the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde at the close of her U.S. Poet Laureateship last spring, Sitka developed curriculum inspired by her poetry and linked schools and communities regionwide in a shared cultural experience we won’t soon forget. K-8 Create now serves more than 5,000 rural students each year, partnering with 20 public schools across nine coastal districts and uniting our region in a shared commitment to rural arts and STEAM access.

Building on a four-year partnership hosting Sitka’s annual Art Invitational at Oregon Contemporary, we were troubled to learn that the National Endowment for the Arts revoked funding for Oregon Contemporary’s own 2026 Oregon Artists’ Biennial. Biennial curator TK Smith is in residence at Sitka now developing the exhibition. To ensure that the show goes on, Sitka is pledging funds from our own emergency reserve to help bridge the loss. At a time when arts organizations are too often forced to compete against each other for limited funding, this collaboration models another way— one rooted in trust, partnership and taking action when our core values are at stake.

On the coast, our ecology partnerships continue to grow. With Oregon Shores’ CoastWatch, Sitka staff and guests monitor a mile of protected Cascade Head shoreline, gathering data and deepening human care for coastal health. Together with the Lincoln Soil and Water Conservation District, we’re restoring native coastal meadows and reintroducing pollinator habitat critical to the endangered Oregon silverspot butterfly.

Across all this work I am deeply thankful to the foundations, public partners and individual donors who make these collaborations possible. Your generosity keeps Oregon’s creative and ecological networks vibrant, helping Sitka weather the tempests of today and stand, like the Sitka spruce that is our namesake, rooted and resilient for generations to come.

Community, not isolation, is the antidote for the moments that feel too big to face alone. When days grow short, partnership is its own kind of light.

With gratitude,

Alison