Bunnell Street Arts Center
05:00 PM - 07:00 PM on Fri, 3 May 2024
Fiber artist Ree Nancarrow and sculptor Margo Klass exhibit together at Bunnell Street Arts Center for the month of May. The exhibit opens on Friday, May 3rd, 2024 from 5-7pm with artist talks at 6pm.
“This body of work draws inspiration from changes I have seen take place over many years living in Alaska. Many of them are visible and accelerated due to global warming, which deeply concerns me. I have been actively involved with the In Time of Change program for the past 12 years, studying with scientists to understand their research and what it means for our natural world. I strive to convey, in a very personal way, what I have come to know.” – Ree Nancarrow
”Wayfinding is a collection of hand-crafted books and box constructions which look both backward and forward in expressions of grief, hope, and gratitude. They all reflect a personal interaction with materials – the beauty of tanned salmon skin, a perfectly formed rock found on a beach walk, a unique flitch of boreal birch, or a quirky object found in a junk store – each takes me by the hand and leads its own transformation into an artist book or box construction.” – Margo Klass
Ree Nancarrow grew up in Redfield, South Dakota, and graduated from the University of Minnesota with a B.S. in Education in 1963. She lived near Denali National Park, AK, for 50 years and currently lives in Fairbanks, AK. She was a DNP Artist-in-Residence, has been accepted and won awards in many national shows, and has had ten solo shows. Major commissions include a panel quilt for the U.S. Army, Fort Wainwright Bassett Hospital, Fairbanks AK, and a four-panel quilt for Eielson Visitor’s Center, Denali National Park, AK. She received an Interior Alaska Mayor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts in 2012. She was a Rasmuson Individual Artists Award recipient in 2020 which provided funds for tools, classes, and time for digital experimentation to create new ideas and designs such as this exhibit at Bunnell Street Arts Center.
Margo Klass is a mixed media sculptor whose work includes box constructions and artist books. In both, natural and found objects are springboards for content, often narrative but always symbolic of meaning beyond what the objects suggest. Aesthetically she draws from her study of medieval art and travel in Japan. She has received awards from the Rasmuson Foundation and Alaska State Council on the Arts. In 2015 she received the Governor’s Individual Artist Award. Her work is in the Anchorage Museum, University of Alaska Museum of the North, Alaska State Museum, Pratt Museum, and other public and private collections. She maintains studios in Fairbanks, Alaska and Corea, Maine.