How I tell my story.

While I wasn’t born here, I am a child of Bristol Bay. I was 6 weeks old when I took my first ride in a bush plane and my adventure seeking family moved here in ’82 from the backcountry of Idaho. I grew up in a summer cabin built by commercial fisherman right next to Leader Creek. From that vantage point, I witnessed the primary hub for our entire commercial fishery rise out of a tundra landscape; an evolution that was made possible by the hard work of a few visionary entrepreneurs and the hydraulic trailers and pumps necessary to move the volume of boats and fish that have since replaced the blueberries that used to grow so well there.  

Poor fish prices and low salmon returns led to my decision to decline a deckie position on an all girl fishing vessel in the 90’s. I took another seasonal job. And then another…I have since remained on the fringe of our fisheries, but I have always stayed deeply connected to the people and the place. No matter where I have ever received my mail, Naknek has always been home. I’ve stripped nets, hung gear, packed salmon roe, washed dishes, stocked whiskey and sold fireworks. These jobs paid for all the necessary extras that supported going to college in Olympia, living in San Francisco and starting a design business in Idaho.  

Then I was called home. And I moved back permanently…All of the threads of my art practice led me back to the most central place of our houses, lives and traditions…the kitchen. I explored these themes while I got reacquainted with living at home again full time. I was struck by the fact that salmon have always been a critical part of the historic habitat of every place I had ever lived, and that salmon are life for the people of our region. In the following moment, it became crystal clear to me that Bristol Bay was the home of the very last great fishery on the planet. I vowed right then and there to dedicate the rest of my professional career to art and design work that supports the place that I love to ensure that our people, traditions and lands continue to thrive. Glimpses of our culture is shared in vast photo collections of buildings and boats, scrawled on walls as graffiti, painted on discarded objects, or found decaying in yards.

Grounding my work in the lived experience of the place that shaped it has reoriented my cultural perspective of my region. It is from this vantage point that I am able to rightly orient myself to find my place in it…Throughout this process of finding my new practice in the culture of my home, I have realized that Bristol Bay is more of an experience than it is a place on the map. It is harsh and home. It is rural and global. It is traditional and brand new. The multimedia forms I create with must also embody these things. I create experiences. I reorient maps to activate human centered perspectives. I address devastating social, environmental and political issues. I activate history. I use new digital mediums. I create mundane functional objects. I tell the story of Bristol Bay so we can heal old wounds. I find pieces of myself in the work everyday.