The Art of Memory

PURCHASE

I truly miss the boats and the water as they embody so many wonderful memories of Ketchikan. One of my favorite memories of Ketchikan is standing by our kitchen window on Water Street watching the boats come and go. The Tongass Narrows is central to many of my friends’ and former neighbors’ livelihoods and pleasures. From the ferries taking Ketchikanians away and back home, the seasonal cruise ships, to the sailboats, I found comfort in watching them all.  Seeing my husband’s joy in being invited by friends on a fishing expedition. Being intrigued by the tenders unloading their fish for processing. Repair boats heading out to assist stranded vessels, or the Trawlers, Seiners, or Gillnetters heading out for another season. Boats symbolize the spirit of hard work and the lively, fun spirit of Ketchikan; they are central to Ketchikanians’ lives, for livelihood, for transportation, or simply for taking time “off the rock.”

image by Barbara Bigelow

We were touring in Prague, Czech Republic and came upon an old life size mural that was covered in spray paint graffiti. My wife and I were very taken by the sheer emotion conveyed in the drawing. It reminded us of the deep love we shared for each other.  I took a photo of the mural and tried (without success) to clean up the image on the computer, so I redrew the drawing with some differences. One clue: Look at the shoes.  The drawing now hangs in our home, reminiscent of a sweet memory!

image KAAHC

PURCHASE

My Mother Lou journaled. In the years before dementia robbed her of her memory, she told me that her journals would someday be mine; that I could do as I wished with her many journaled books (read, burn, throw away…). While Lou was an artist who never spent enough time pursuing her talents, she enjoyed art. Since her death, Lou’s journals sat in a drawer in my home for many years.  That her words have taken wings would make her happy.  She would appreciate what her daughter has created. Thank you, Lou, for sharing your story with me. I love you forever.

image Jeff Fitzwater

Even the most humble material can be turned into a magical piece of art.  As a large-scale Muralist, painting on a scale this small was challenging.  I grew up with 10 sisters and brothers and we were poor.  As a child I made toys for my siblings out of found and 2nd hand objects.  This piece honors my hermana here in Ketchikan.

image KAAHC

PURCHASE

This print represents a regional memory of Southeast Alaska’s timber industry . . . one in particular, in the 1940’s, hard working sawyers, pictured here, were just the tip of the iceberg of the men and women who were pivotal in supplying aircraft grade spruce to the war-effort.  One example, under the U.S. Forest Service’s 1942 “Alaska Spruce Log Program,” logs were harvested and collected into “Davis-Rafts” out of Edna Bay, AK (a logging camp of 250 residents at the time) for ocean-going transport to Puget Sound Washington to be milled into aircraft parts.  PS:  There are 12 different hidden items (Easter eggs) in this print.  Can you find them all?  Candycane, skull, rifle, heart, key, cowboy boot, State of Alaska, toothbrush, salmon,4 leaf clover, ribbon & starfish. 

image Brian Elliott

PURCHASE

This print represents a persona memory of mine . . .Growing up in Ketchikan Alaska, our family was fortunate to have owned and utilized multiple aircraft as a mode of transportation for work and play.  My Dad, Robert B. Elliot, a multi-engine/IFR rated pilot, would take our family to places rarely seen by most individuals to fish, hunt, and explore.  This scene depicts the 3500 ft granite walls looking west from inside Lake Manzoni, east of Revillagigedo Island in the Misty Fjords National Monument.  Our Cessna 185 is in the foreground, log jam at the head of granite creek is over the right wing tip.  Dedicated to Bob.

image Brian Elliott

PURCHASE

My image is the subject behind a wall of slurs and epithets that children and teens deal with at school or online. These words can leave deep and lasting scars if not dealt with and transformed. I will be using some additional info on the power of words to hurt or heal, the power of the one being bullied, and local resources for help along with the main framed print which will bring the total space needed to 33” wide by 22” deep.

image Jeff Fitzwater

Often senses other than sight can create the strongest memories and emotions. The taste of chocolate milk, the joy of time spent with the ones we love, the smell of a hospital, the cold of clinical spaces, the fear of losing your memories. My hands still smell like the hospital and maybe they always will. 

image KAAHC

PURCHASE

Memory rarely follows a straight path. It can weave and wind through the brain like a maze. Sometimes the best we can do is go where the path takes us.

image Grace Freeman

PURCHASE

In 2018 my nephew and Harley Davidson owner, Mad Marv Dewitt gave me an advertisement from a motorcycle magazine in the shape of motorcycle goggles with red and green 3-D lenses.  We had been looking at a recent painting using an old art school 3-D glasses trick and watching the contrasting color pop.  Over the years the lenses fell out and I was left with the template which I thought would be a good departure from the Frequency of Silence cycle of painting that was just winding down.  I love the questions raised by the “why?” leading the eye into the other elements of the work.  

Remembered views from shoreline granite cliffs covered with mosses, stunted trees, otter slides, tossed drift with glass balls and the sea twinkling in the sun have left stunning memories and unbelievable vistas on my soul. I cannot reproduce the breeze or the smell of this purity, so my work becomes symbolic of those senses. When I learned that trees and plants communicate through a complex system of impulses I chose to include frequency and waves of invisible patterns based on my impulses of memory. This cycle of work includes a mask template. 

image Mary Ida Henrikson

PURCHASE

This painting approaches the theme of the show with my memories of salt chucks in  George Inlet, Filmore Inlet, and Kitkun Bay in Cholmondeley Sound.  I’d also experienced the whirl pools of Seymore Canal in Canada which working on the Alaska Marine Highway.  I’d worked all these areas in the summer and winter, in the dark and in the light.  And I savored every view.

image Mary Ida Henrikson

PURCHASE

There is great depth and power in remembering our natural cycles with the rhythms of Life displayed, every month, in the phases of the moon. In our Western society, we are encouraged to be radiant and shining all day, all month, and all life like the Sun. But, for many people with uteruses, there comes a time of initiation when an individual is called deeper into the dark spaces of one’s own womb. During a descent, one begins to remember their cycle as a sacred bond between not only oneself, the Earth and other womb-bearers, but also above with the cosmic energies of the moon. The moon, like the menarche, goes dark and is not visible in the sky every month-- This knowledge and wisdom effects all of us—as it is historically also a guide for planting and for harvesting—an innately human experience that connects us all to the life-giving Earth which sustains us.

image KAAHC

PURCHASE

This is a memory of sailing from Hawaii to Seattle in our 50-foot sailboat “Halimede” in 1988. This depicts a fierce storm that hit us in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that destroyed one of our sails in the middle of the night. My father has passed away, and that many-week adventure is one of my favorite memories. That sailboat also was our home for five years when I was in high school, and we sailed from Seattle to Ketchikan on it, arriving in Ketchikan in 1981 at Casey Moran Harbor.

image Danelle Kelly

This piece is an interpretation of the Ketchikan Rainbird: inspired by many childhood memories of exploration on the Rainbird trail, closed since the 2024 landslide. Many games of hide-and-seek, stick-wars, and imaginary forest ice cream shops will be missed.

image KAAHC

PURCHASE

When I closed my eyes to think of a happy childhood memory, this is what I visualized.

image Brianna Lee

PURCHASE

According to Merriam-Webster, “a dunce is defined as a mentally dull or stupid person. It refers to someone who is slow to learn or lacks capacity, often used to describe someone unintelligent.”  “When I was 10 years old, I was called a dunce when I was getting help with my math homework. I had never heard that word before, so later that day, I went to our Webster’s dictionary and looked it up. I let that memory and those words be imprinted on my 10-year-old identity. Through my art practice, memories resurface, and I’m given the opportunity to revisit, release, and forgive. What a gift!”

image Brianna Lee

PURCHASE

I’ve been reflecting on how special places can remain the same as human lives evolved and alter around them.  They serve as constant- a steady reminder that nature will comfort and surround us with beautiful familiarity as we journey through life’s joys and sorrows.  

image Cammie May

This past winter, a friend of mine shared several textile items she had brought back from her mother’s house after her recent passing. Some pieces held memories of her own, while others carried stories only her mother could have told. This jacket weaves together fragments of fabric, buttons, and other repurposed textiles from her life—her home, her history, her story. I'm grateful to have been entrusted with these heirlooms and for the chance to create something new to be enjoyed for years to come.

image KAAHC

A playful collision of domestic craft and pop-culture chaos, where the formal silence of ancestors I’ve never met is interrupted by vibrant, abstract embroidery. I’m not just preserving a family history; I’m inviting the past to a technicolor party.

image KAAHC

PURCHASE

This is an imaginative place painted through observance of the colors in Mexico homes, the beautiful pottery and tile, plants and flowers along the streets, and Guadalupe in every nook and cranny.  Inspired by a coffee house down the road which had a herd of rescue cats.  No photos were used … all memory of observance…

image Terri Metcalf

PURCHASE

Memory is elusive, intangible, and changeable. When reflecting on the concept of memory, I kept going back to the idea that memories are temporary and often unreliable, and that trying to hold on to them often feels like trying to capture smoke on your hands.

image Lori Orlowski

PURCHASE

Human minds are poor recollectors of facts, as we tend to remember most clearly the highest highs and lowest lows of an event rather than recall mundanity. Thus reality is transformed in our memories into these extremes. The drama of a terrifying storm or the calm perfection of a sunny day overwrite what was prosaic and become our new truth. Over the course of our lives, these new truths layer onto each other and we create entire narratives of predominantly drastic moments. I would not choose to bear witness to life in any other way.

image Leona Pfeiffer

PURCHASE

Human minds are poor recollectors of facts, as we tend to remember most clearly the highest highs and lowest lows of an event rather than recall mundanity. Thus reality is transformed in our memories into these extremes. The drama of a terrifying storm or the calm perfection of a sunny day overwrite what was prosaic and become our new truth. Over the course of our lives, these new truths layer onto each other and we create entire narratives of predominantly drastic moments. I would not choose to bear witness to life in any other way.

image Leona Pfeiffer

PURCHASE

The most beautiful moments of nature preserved in my memory took shape on this canvas out of a storm of colors. The small moments that turn a person into who they are, are memories like these. Trees growing tall, mushrooms in their shadowed roots, mountains that take over the sky, the suns that dip behind them and the shinning silver moons. It’s these memories that shape me into who I am, and in turn it’s I who shape them into art.   

image Barbara Bigelow

PURCHASE

Dragons were as much a part of my childhood as home cooked meals and time spent in the woods, my memories of them equally real. The stories and drawing of them would inspire me to draw better and better dragons. I chased the realism of animals. Instead of focusing on the realism in this piece, I focused on the innate magic of art. The magic of childhood and chasing fantasies as a dragon would chase bubbles. When you think you have caught it and finally understand it, it vanishes into thin air, as a bubble pops. 

image Barbara Bigelow

There are no memories more precious to me than those shared with my children. The memory of the smell of their skin, the sound of their breathing and the feel of their touch. Experiencing all the facets of Motherhood is a privilege.

image KAAHC

PURCHASE

Inspired by “Hercules Drunkenness” A 2nd century AD mosaic measuring 36’ x 22’! It was found on the dining room floor of a villa in Vienna, France. I stumbled upon this piece while touring Lyon, France, 3 years ago. My first thoughts went to the artisans who created this piece so long ago, their effort and vision enduring long past the knowing of them.  The motifs and geometrical layout also immediately reminded me of my mother and the quilts she has meticulously crafted throughout her lifetime. The concept of these familiar motifs and geometrical patterns being repeated and emulated in so many different art forms lasting throughout the centuries reassured me that art brings permanence to the memory of her. This piece is dedicated to my mother, and is a reminder that her efforts as an artist and a mother will not be lost; as I watch her ability to create art and remember unravel. 

image KAAHC

PURCHASE

This image comes from my memory of car-camping along the Columbia River as a child in the early 70’s. I would like to think that the process of its making, without concrete information or evidence through a series of activities: sketches from memory, hand drawn schematics from the sketches, physically setting the scene with the constructed objects, using colored light to build the atmosphere, and using the film camera to leave the contextual elements around the frame, help to make sure that in every way the image is one that only I could make, and its internal truths unarguable.

image Kenneth Ragsdale

PURCHASE

We are very lucky to live in this place where we are surrounded by the ocean and this most amazing forest of trees. Fishing for salmon is one of the best endeavors a person can do in this life. This mosaic is inspired by my son Luke who was born and raised right here in Ketchikan. This artwork evokes so many great memories and days upon days spent on the water catching fish. I have a lot of respect for the women and men who take on the uncertainties and risks that are unavoidable in the fishing industry. Anybody who spends a summer day on the water knows the feel of the waves, the smell of the shoreline, and the joy that comes with 16 hours of daylight.

image Barbara Bigelow

PURCHASE

Morning Mist is a favorite subject as it brings back memories of being on the water in the early morning hours and the feel of the air and the mist so calming to the soul. Painting this ocean subject with glazed layers of paint gives me the sense of being there and with that bringing the viewer along also.

image KAAHC

PURCHASE

This squirrel was a pet of my children and also a sweet memory of mine as a child growing up.  Both were so tame they ate out of our hand.  I’ve painted this with the light in the background creating a forest cathedral that invites the viewer into the squirrel’s world.

image Barbara Bigelow

PURCHASE

Memory is good and bad, light and dark, happy and sad. Remembering life’s events, the environments, and the people in them, woven together to create memories. 

image KAAHC

PURCHASE

Memory is good and bad, light and dark, happy and sad. Remembering life’s events, the environments, and the people in them, woven together to create memories. 

image KAAHC

PURCHASE

Memory is good and bad, light and dark, happy and sad. Remembering life’s events, the environments, and the people in them, woven together to create memories. 

image KAAHC

It is Mid-September, the subject is walking out on the deck looking South where he’s heading after a summer job.  We are seeing him remember; I can imagine what he remembers—from what I remember.

image KAAHC

PURCHASE

Growing up on the coast of North Carolina, I was spoiled by beautiful sunsets over the Albemarle Sound. Many evenings my dad would call me and my brother away from whatever we were doing to watch the sunset, either from the living room windows or from the pier across the street. The colors, changing by the minute, filled my mind with awe and heart with swelling joy for the place I lived, as well as my family. No sunset was ever quite the same! Now in my mid-20’s, whenever I see a beautiful sunset, I think of those evenings, dropping everything to heed dad’s call and take in the colors. 

image KAAHC

PURCHASE

Cradle (8 days, 8 nights) examines the boundaries of memory by confronting the parts of our personal histories that are missing, fragmented, and messy. Using Polaroid film and textile work, Sinclair suggests that the act of forgetting is just as integral to the human experience as remembrance is.

image Barbara Bigelow

PURCHASE

Richard Smith, Civil Engineer also loved to create unique wood furniture.  These two “poetry on legs” (AKA cocktail tables) are reminiscent of mid-20st century fine art furniture in finely-crafted wood artisanship.  The tables will grace any elegant living room making space for guests to balance their tea, wine or martinis in fashion.  The memory of the art speaks to what was and what still is… somewhere in time.

image Barbara Bigelow

PURCHASE

I remember once watching a newly-hatched spider weave a web. It needed no instruction, it was born with that memory. Playing cards are used as a mnemonic training tool, with the ability to memorize cards as a reflection of one’s skills. Informed by acquired memories over time, we might hold our cards differently, and play our hand with more prudence.

image Jeanette Sweetman

PURCHASE framed work

PURCHASED unframed work

When I see a glitter of dragonflies,  I always think of dragonfly ancestors (Meganeura and Meganeuropsis) from the Carboniferous times].  With wingspans of 30 inches, imagine that whirrrr! 

image Evon Zerbetz

PURCHASE framed work

PURCHASE unframed work

How do salmon get home to their streams of origin? They are able to remember, or imprint,  on smells of their freshwater environment. They will leave as small fingerling, eat their way through food resources through thousands of miles of the North Pacific Ocean, and return 2 – 4 or so years later as mature fish. When they are far from their streams they have another superpower, to imprint on the earth’s magnetic field at the point where they first enter the sea.

image Evon Zerbetz