KMXT 100.1 FM Public Radio in Kodiak, Alaska
Kayla Desroches/KMXT
The Alutiiq Museum will feature the work of two artists this coming year thanks to support from the Rasmuson Foundation. Both artists have connections to Kodiak and incorporate its natural resources into their paintings.
Cathy Cordry is a Kodiak City resident and her series of paintings depicts Kodiak flowers and plants. Each painting focuses on one subject, like a chocolate lily or cottongrass, and Cordry says she uses a couple of methods to lead the eye – from composition to painting the flowers in focus and the background as a blur.
She says she paints whatever flowers appeal to her.
“I think the one that I really, really like painting the most is probably the iris, because it just has a lot of depth and the way the light plays on the petals and the way the color changes from the inside of the white to the bluish purple of the petal itself.”
She says she also paints landscapes, which is likewise true of the second artist the Alutiiq museum will exhibit, Anchorage-based Linda Infante Lyons, whose family has roots in Kodiak.
She says her oil painting, which depicts an Alutiiq woman in the style of a Russian Orthodox icon, is based on her great-grandmother, who was from Karluk.
Infante Lyons says she painted the piece for a show about decolonization, its effects on Alaska Native traditions and culture, and restoring repressed or lost traditions. She says that’s why the painting combines elements of Russian Orthodox and Alutiiq culture.
“Instead of saying let’s decolonize, let’s take away and throw away any colonizing culture – in other words, European culture – European culture and religion and traditions are part of Alaska Native culture now. And I wanted to bring those two elements together.”
While modeled after the image of Madonna, the woman holds a seal in place of the Christ Child. A sprig of pushki sticks out of the seal’s paw. Infante Lyons says she spent many of her childhood summers in Kodiak with her grandmother, who was knowledgeable about local plants, like pushki.
The Alutiiq Museum received $10,000 for the acquisition of the painting by Infante Lyons and the series by Cordry, and will incorporate them in exhibits next year.
