This exhibition includes examples from over 20 years of her career. While they are technically referred to as “quilts” they are made to be showcased on the wall and enjoyed from a distance. It is a gift to view these pieces up close and personal because the colors and textures will consume and welcome you.

Katie was born and raised in Eureka, California and remembers fondly the many years of enjoying the Morris Graves Museum of Art as a child when it was the Carnegie Library. She lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico for 25 years before returning to Humboldt County six years ago to live in Fortuna. She has taught her concepts and techniques and exhibited worldwide, won numerous awards, and is a self-taught artist who enjoys photography, painting and textile work.

Bernadette Vielbig was born and raised on a small self-sufficient farm in northern California.  As a first generation American born of naturalized citizen parents, her informative years left an impression of usefulness in all things deep in her psyche. Bernadette studied fine art and design throughout her youth and earned a BA in Studio Art from Humboldt State University and went on to earn a Masters of Fine Art with studio concentrations in sculpture and design from Louisiana State University.  While attending LSU she taught three-dimensional design and drawing classes before earning her letters.  During her career as an academic she was a faculty specialist in new facilities, labs, building design and accomplished such tasks at the University of South Carolina Columbia, Central Michigan University where she was also awarded the Stephen F Barstow Artist in Residence before moving onto a tenure track role as the sole faculty in the sculpture area curriculum at Spokane Falls Community College in eastern Washington.  Bernadette left her post and tenure in eastern WA to come back home to northern California.  In spring 2017 she landed on the edge in Eureka where she plans to stay.  Bernadette occasionally teaches workshops or lectures at large, and is active in her own studio practice research.  She is settling into a life back in Humboldt county and is working towards teaching small format workshops to the public in the near future at her live/work space in Eureka.

Her work has been featured nationally at gallery & museum venues including the Kohler Design Center, Chrysler Museum of Art, NOLA Contemporary Art Center, and the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture.  She is represented in both public and private collections across the country as well.  Vielbig has received numerous grants and awards for her work and has held positions with several artist-in-residence programs nationally.  Her media choices and skill set in fine art are vast, one could almost say limitless; she works with what she has, where she is.  An accomplished fabricator, caster, and builder she often starts with the found object as a launching point. Her studio practice is constantly exploring new ways of communicating visually with old things.

Description text goAs an artist, Ingrid was influenced by her creative family heritage and immediate environment, especially the vast wilderness of the North Coast. An investigation of different media led Ingrid down a path of visual exploration, beginning with rustic ceramics featuring utilitarian tools in a traditional form. These explorations ultimately resulted in vibrant, expressive plein air paintings executed from her intimate connection to the environment. It was this instinctive need to work with the elements of nature that led her on a final expedition which has left a large void in the artistic community of the North Coast, even a decade and a half later.

The Ingrid Nickelsen Trust was established by the estate of the artist for the purpose of providing annual support through grants to women artists in Humboldt County and the Trust has supported countless individual artists and arts organizations to continue the legacy Ingrid left on the community. The museum-wide exhibition will highlight the history of the Trust as well original work by Ingrid Nickelsen.es here
The juror for this exhibition is Humboldt-based, Brooklyn-born abstract painter Joan Gold. Gold received her art education at The Cooper Union and The Brooklyn Museum in New York City, and at The Escuela de Bellas Artes in Caracas, Venezuela. In 1955 she was awarded a U. S. State Department fellowship to paint and study in Venezuela where she remained for the next twenty-four years. She retired as Associate Professor of the Universidad Metropolitana, Caracas, and received awards for her service to the country as an educator. In 1990 she received a Yaddo Fellowship in Saratoga Springs, New York. She has exhibited extensively in the U.S. and abroad. Other honors have included the Victor Jacoby Award, Beverly Faben Artist Grant, and the Ingrid Nickelsen Trust Grant for Women Artists. Most recently, she received a Pollack-Krasner Grant.

Joan Gold will be selecting the work for inclusion in the exhibition as well as one Juror’s Choice Award for $1,000 and ten Ingrid Nickelsen Trust Awards for $500 each. Awards will be presented on August 6th at 5:30 p.m., prior to First Saturday Night Arts Alive! The public is invited to attend.

Gafill’s artistic journey is in a direct line from her great-great[1]grandmother, artist Jane Gallatin Powers, Powers grew up in Sacramento, just after the Gold Rush. Powers studied at the Mark Hopkins institute in San Francisco, and subsequently embarked on a life in the arts in Italy and France, where she abandoned California Impressionism for European Modernism. Gafill’s grand-parents, Bill and Lolly Fassett built Nepenthe Restaurant in Big Sur, where Erin was raised. The influence of her creative ancestors, the rugged natural environment of Big Sur, where she lives, and the need for “making do” in her isolated community inspired her life in the arts. Besides Erin’s original artwork, this exhibition will include a contextual installation of historic artifacts and original artwork from her unique background.

Female energy is something I’m very fascinated by, including the ultimate female magic trick, pregnancy. I see it as a superpower and truly a miracle, so capturing that process is incredibly rewarding to me. I usually photograph my subjects in various outdoor locations. I look for various degrees of mystery, intrigue, humor, and capturing that divine feminine essence. Sometimes telling a story, or leaving you with whatever feelings it stirs inside. I started using my photographic images as a template for painting. Some images are from black and white film, from many years ago and others are more recent, done with a digital camera. I found that using metallic paints had a magical way of catching light. Depending on where you stand, time of day, it almost makes the image come alive and look 3D. I also love the variation of textures from the paint, and sometimes I use found objects. This goes back to my early days of drawing, painting, collage and hand tinting my black and white prints with oils.

I grew up and went to school in the San Francisco bay area and came to Humboldt County in 2000. I opened my lighting store called Love Lights in Eureka in 2005, which just closed in 2022. My store was also my art studio, but now my studio is at home. I am a member of Redwood Arts Association, Redwood Camera club and have participated in many of their shows, including the Arcata Airport, and other Arts Alive locations.

Worship at a lactating parachute volcano - the Source of the Milks - as her bosom emanates Sustenance. From her heroic crown spews a gargantuan smoke cloud that traverses overhead, skirting bloated palm leaves, cutting through the amplified sounds of a subterranean rainforest. 

Feel stalagmites of stacked grass skirts brush against your skin. Question who dwells in a tortilla-skinned den while deciphering the coded meanings of the Paleolithic paintings that blanket the cavern walls. 

A thirty foot assemblage of stuffed and stubbled vintage sleeping bags surveys the terrain, as if contemplating a selection from a conveyor belt sushi bar. Primordial cabbage patches swell in the nutrient-rich environs, as species push past their intended DNA structures, morphing into new breeds; everything evolving in unchecked isolation to larger than life capacity.

Belly up to an all your eyes can eat buffet and leave the dreamlike journey satiated with self-empowerment. Spread the wisdom of this inner landscape that is available to all who believe.

In addition to learning patience with working through a multi-day project and teamwork to ensure each child has a mask, the students learn how to use tools. Exacto knives, hot glue guns and other tools might not be the first things we entrust to a young person, but we educate our students on how to use the tools safely and effectively to complete the mask projects. 

Though Egyptian death masks were created from a variety of materials, royal masks were fashioned from precious metals such as gold and bronze by skilled craftsmen.  They were placed on the sarcophagus, or coffin, which contained the mummified body of the deceased person. They were meant to resemble the deceased in order to help their souls recognize their body and return to it. Anubis, god of the dead, would then judge whether they would be allowed to pass into the afterlife.  Though many believe that Egyptians were preoccupied with death, quite the contrary is true.  They believed that this life was so rich and amazing that they wanted to ensure that it would continue eternally. 

Bernadette Vielbig was born and raised on a small self-sufficient farm in northern California. As a first generation American born of naturalized citizen parents, her informative years left an impression of usefulness in all things deep in her psyche. Bernadette studied fine art and design throughout her youth and earned a BA in Studio Art from Humboldt State University and went on to earn a Masters of Fine Art with studio concentrations in sculpture and design from Louisiana State University. While attending LSU she taught three-dimensional design and drawing classes before earning her letters. During her career as an academic she was a faculty specialist in new facilities, labs, building design and accomplished such tasks at the University of South Carolina Columbia, Central Michigan University where she was also awarded the Stephen F Barstow Artist in Residence before moving onto a tenure track role as the sole faculty in the sculpture area curriculum at Spokane Falls Community College in eastern Washington.

Bernadette left her post and tenure in eastern WA to come back home to northern California. In spring 2017 she landed on the edge in Eureka where she plans to stay. Bernadette occasionally teaches workshops or lectures on process at large, as well as her own studio practice research, and is settling into a life of studio time here back in Humboldt county. Vielbig hopes to be able to teach small format workshops to the public in the near future at her live/work space in Eureka. Her work has been featured nationally at gallery & museum venues including the Kohler Design Center, Chrysler Museum of Art, NOLA Contemporary Art Center, and the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture. She is represented in both public and private collections across the country as well. Vielbig has received numerous grants and awards for her work and has held positions with several artist-in-residence programs nationally. Her media choices and skill set in fine art are vast, one could almost say limitless; she works with what she has, where she is. An accomplished fabricator, caster, and builder she often starts with the found object as alaunching point.

Her studio practice is prolific as she continues to explore new ways of communicating visually. In essence, Bernadette is a force of nature. The works in this exhibition span several decades of her studio practice, as well as recently produced pieces specifically for the Morris Graves Museum of Art. Utilizing all her tools in this selected grouping media choices include – but are not limited to-, cast lead, burn scar drawings, markers, slip cast ceramic, beeswax, found objects, custom hardware and brackets made from steel, copper and rusted nails. Her attraction to the found object starts with its’ original intent or function, she acknowledges the history of the object as well as it’s formal elements; shape, use, physical make up and ties these concepts to her content as she spins the work into a purely aesthetic function. In their most primary sense, her visual stories speak to our disposable culture which she was abhorred by in the 1970’s and watched that culture grow exponentially.

Her content often finds its’ starting point there and weaves in and out of tangents about convenience, need vs want, food supply and production, and basic simplicity in what we prioritize to have a good life. Within all of that, her works takes the viewer on a ride through history and hysteria, knowing and learning, nostalgia and unknown futures. Bernadette does this with a sense of humor because she is aware that to acknowledge the problems one must also acknowledge their involvement in them. Planned obsolescence may drive the marketplace but it also creates waste surplus in unmanageable magnitudes. By using would be garbage, Vielbig is commenting on our need to stop generating so much of it. She longs for the day such materials are not readily available to her.

I've experienced both a hesitancy to join in the action at times, and a desire to stand back to admire it; even small moments can hold great impact. Still, it's nice to step from that place of awe back into the action, so, consider yourself invited. 

Julie Smiley was born in Crescent City, California in 1977. Smiley’s main work is in oil painting, though she has often mixed media. Smiley completed an MFA in Visual Arts Education from Ohio State University, received her teaching credential from Humboldt State University, CA, and has dual BA’s in Studio Arts and Communication Arts from Gordon College, MA.

Smiley’s work is greatly influenced by her sensitivity to relationships between people and physical spaces, and ideas of social and personal control. After teaching high school arts and starting a family in the last decade, her current work focuses on the local landscapes.