The symposium and exhibition was a collaboration between the University of the Arctic, ASAD Thematic Network, the University of Alaska Anchorage, the University of Lapland, and the Kimura Gallery.

Arctic Sustainable Arts and Design (ASAD) is a Thematic Network that aims to identify and share contemporary and innovative practices in teaching, learning, research, and knowledge exchange in the fields of arts, design and visual culture education. In summary, the network seeks to promote cooperation and collaboration between academic institutions and communities, advance art education amongst members and share both traditional and contemporary practices in teaching, learning and research.

SYMPOSIUM and EXHIBIT THEME

What role can art play in representing a northern sense of culture, community and identity? How can art stimulate debate about indigenous issues and other northern and Arctic ways of living in challenging environments? What role can art play in communication of northern issues? How might art communication some of the challenges facing those living in northern areas today? What role might art play in chronicling issues important to places and people in the north? These questions are central to this long-term project coordinated by ASAD.

CURATOR OF THE EXHIBITION

Dr. Sean Licka, Professor of Art History, Department of Art, UAA

• Ruth Beer

  Ruth Beer

  Professor of Art
  Emily Carr University
  Vancouver, CANADA

  Cracks in the Ice: Mapping Northern Resource Extraction, Art, Culture and the Environment
  This presentation addresses northern challenges at the intersection of advancing resource extraction development, and the transformation of cultures and ecology of remote regions of Canada. It considers the role of creative past and recent heritage forms of expression, contemporary visual art and digital media artistic practices in mapping these changes and drawing attention to adaptations, reconciliation of aboriginal and non-aboriginal peoples, and shifting mobilities impacting everyday life in the north. We ask: What are ways that cultural producers with interest in art, storytelling and pedagogy, and with an appreciation of these complex interlaced dynamics of culture, economy and the environment, local particularities and shared experiences, can bridge geographies and cultures of shifting ground and open water? This paper describes a case study that aims to strengthen north/south partnerships and relationships and looks to promote dialogue and exchange with other polar nations to further cross-cultural understanding/alliances and pedagogical approaches through art for sustainable futures.

  Biography
  Ruth Beer’s cross-disciplinary artistic research is informed by the social sciences and humanities within the expanded field of contemporary art and media. Her research and creation projects supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities research Council of Canada include Catch & Release: Mapping Cultural and Geographic Transitions (2009-2013) concerned with transformation of coastal communities and the demise of the salmon canning industry and Trading Routes: Grease Trails, Oil Pipelines (2013-2017) that seeks to promote dialogue and exchange through creative cultural production of artworks and exhibitions. Her aesthetic works explore cultural and ecological impacts of resource extraction industry expansion (eg pipelines) within the contested terrain of the Pacific Northwest and Arctic regions. She is Professor of Visual Art and Material Practice and Assistant Dean of Research at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver BC.

• Courtney Chetwynd

  Courtney Chetwynd

  University of Dundee
  Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, CANADA

  An/other North: Considering the Role of Tacit Knowledge in the North
  Art and design intervention can reveal tacit forms of Northern knowing and thinking, which larger society renders as imperceptible. My practice addresses the role of artists as contributing towards expressions of embedded ‘intangible’ knowledge. Northern ways of knowing are often derived from sharing and storytelling, as conveyed through metaphor and analogy. There is a tendency towards so-called ‘local’ knowledge, which is simply referring to more intimate and rooted ways of knowing. Art and design practice relies on tacit knowledge in conceptualization, process, material engagement, aesthetics, and the conveyance of ideas. It is a shift in research from displaced theories, towards direct information derived from relationships with place, people, and materials, through acts of ‘doing’. My work addresses these universal themes through reframing and remaking personal narratives and collective histories, exploring thresholds socially and within geographies, and merging truths and fictions to examine ways in which an artist can function as a cultural connector.

  Biography
  Courtney Chetwynd is an artist-researcher from Canada’s Northwest Territories. Currently a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Dundee in Scotland. She has exhibited work in New York City, Atlanta, Indianapolis, Scotland, throughout Canada, and most recently, London, UK. Courtney has received awards and research grants from the Alberta Foundation of the Arts, Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada Council for the Arts, University of Calgary, Centre for Research in the Fine Arts, and the NWT Arts Council. Her work focuses upon metaphors of the body, space, and relationships by integrating Northern concepts and materials in a poetic and psychologically charged manner.

• Michael Conti

  Michael Conti

  University of Alaska Anchorage

   

  Learn the basic skills for long exposure photography and painting with light. Equipment used will include tripods, studio backdrops, cell phones, projectors, strobe lighting, flash lights, Christmas lights and other improvised light sources.

   

  Biography
  Michael Conti is a photographer, mixed media and video artist based in Anchorage, Alaska. He earned a BFA from the University of Alaska Anchorage, and an MFA from Lesley University College of Art and Design. In 2016 he will be mounting a major solo exhibit at the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center. His video work has been shown at the Nam June Paik Art Center in Seoul, South Korea, ContainR at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada and won awards at the Anchorage International Film Festival.

  He received a project award from the Rasmuson Foundation in both 2006 and 2015 and is a Connie Boocheever Fellow from the Alaska State Council on the Arts in 2011. He presently teaches printmaking, photography and video art at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

• Herminia Din

  Herminia Din

  Professor of Art Education
  University of Alaska Anchorage

  The environment is a global concern, both in global warming and pollution caused by human activity. Art can contribute to increased awareness of these concerns especially given widespread interest in connections with the Arctic.

  Responding to the recycled-based art movement, Junk to Funk was created in 2008. The premise was that reducing consumption and reusing waste materials could be an essential link in the recycling effort to save and repurpose valuable resources especially in the Arctic region. In late 2013, the Winter Design Project was developed to provide UAA faculty and students an opportunity to explore and create an outdoor winter space, and to look at “ice and snow”— a truly sustainable medium—from a new perspective.

  The purpose of this presentation is to share these collaborative learning experiences among faculty and students from diverse disciplines in the context of practice sustainable art. These experiences will provide participants a lasting foundation in art education and a positive impact in their understanding and shared responsibility for the environment.

  Biography
  Herminia Din is professor of art education at University of Alaska Anchorage. Holding a Ph.D. in art education from Ohio State University, she specializes in museum technology, and community-based art education. She received 2013 UAA Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence in Sustainability for her efforts to raise awareness of the “reduce” and “reuse” methods of dealing with waste products. To continue the promotion of sustainable art on campus, she began the Winter Design Project in 2014 working with faculty and students to explore and create an outdoor winter space by looking at “ice and snow” from a new perspective.

• Monica Garcia-Itchoak  
   

  Monica Garcia-Itchoak

  Anchorage, ALASKA

  Museum Education in a Hyper-Connected Ecosystem
  Museums are changing at an uber-hyper rate and organizations are having to navigate new learning environments. How do museums stay relevant in an ever-changing world? Can educators be at the forefront of this change? How do museums identify and leverage community resources? How can museum educators be a part of the intersection of community partnerships to create significant social and cultural impacts? This participatory session is hands-on and conversational on how “getting personal” equals “authentic relevancy” through deeper visitor experiences that provoke new ways of seeing and thinking.

  Biography
  Monica has over 26 years of extensive formal and informal education leadership, public engagement and interdisciplinary experiences, with an emphasis on participatory intergenerational program design. Monica Garcia-Itchoak is the Executive Director at the Alaska Museum of Science and Nature in the Mt. View neighborhood of Anchorage, Alaska. More recently, Monica was the Director of Education and Interpretation at the Anchorage Museum, the Manager of Museum Learning Experiences at the Gottesman Center for Science Teaching and Learning at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, the Manager of Teacher Professional Development and Strategic Partnerships at the Field Museum in Chicago, and directly after graduate school was the Museum CEO/Museum Director of Wonder Works, A Children’s Museum in Oak Park, Illinois

• Debbie Harris

  Debbie Harris

  President
  The Alaska Arts Education Consortium

  Children of the North: Creativity, Culture and Community
  When we consider the path of an artist we often overlook his or her earliest stages as a child and how experiences in those early years shape emerging creativity. The Alaska Arts Education Consortium has chosen to focus its energies on those early years within the setting of arts education. Students growing up in Alaska learn they are part of a larger community that faces many celebrations and challenges unique to living in the North. Key pieces of that learning come from the teachers our students are paired with as they move through their educational career. We help to prepare and support Alaska’s educators to teach the arts across the curriculum in order that through exposure to the arts, culture, and community students can begin to formulate their own ideas about what it means to think and live creatively as Northern citizens.

  Biography
  The Alaska Arts Education Consortium (AAEC) is an affiliation of school districts, organizations and individuals committed to preparing and supporting educators so that they can teach the arts across the curriculum. Our mission is to promote high achievement for all Alaskan students in and through the arts by:

  • Creating and sustaining communication networks
  • Initiating and strengthening community partnerships
  • Preparing and supporting educators through professional development.

  The arts are vitally important as we strive to educate our Northern students to be effective communicators and responsible, contributing citizens. In the broadest sense the arts allow us to participate across circumstances of language, culture, and geography in the ongoing conversations of humankind.

   
•  Nick Higgins

  Nick Higgins

  Professor and Chair of Media Practice
  Director, Creative Media Academy
  University of the West of Scotland

  uws.io : Exploring Northern Realities in Digital Third Space
  It has long been argued that the internet offers rural and periphery communities the means to transcend cultural isolation, but does the online digital environment also offer its own distinct artistic potential, making possible creative collaborations and access to a unique global audience with whom northern realities can be explored and shared?

  Students and staff at the UWS Creative Media Academy have been engaged in a pilot project – uws.io - that brings together industry professionals and digital designers to create what can be understood as digital ‘third space’. The first manifestations of this digital ‘third space’ have been the creation of two transmedia projects on the issues of living with nuclear power and river landscapes, issues relevant across the northern region.

  This paper will present the practice-based learning from delivering the river and nuclear editions of the uws.io digital platform with a view to proposing how such digital art practice might offer collaborative opportunities for communities across the region.

  Biography
  Professor Higgins is the Director of the Creative Media Academy and Chair of Media Practice in the School of Media, Culture & Society at the University of the West of Scotland. He is also an award winning documentary director and producer, with a reputation for exploring form through his practice-based research.

  Previous productions have included the BAFTA Scotland nominated, We Are Northern Lights (2013), that employed techniques of crowd-sourcing to produce the first ever mass-participation documentary to explore the issue of Scottish identity. The BBC commissioned The New Ten Commandments (2008) engaged ten different directors to create a port manteaux feature documentary that explored the issue of Human Rights in Scotland. His fil

• Mirja Hiltunen

  Mirja Hiltunen

  Professor of Art Education
  University of Lapland
  Rovaniemi, FINLAND

  Solar Eclipse, Winter Art and Ice Fishing
  Example of a long-term community-based art education collaboration in Finnish Lapland

  The presentation examines University of Lapland’s community-based art education workshops carried out the past twenty years by the students of art education and local people in the most northern municipality of Finland, Utsjoki. In March 2015 Utsjoki Ursa and Village Association organized a joint science and art event to celebrate the solar eclipse. The responsibility of art education in that event was to develop environmental and community art activities as a part of the science program. In practice, as several times before in Utsjoki, place and community specific environmental and winter art serves as a tool to encourage schools, teachers, pupils and their parents and other villagers to get involved in art based modes of operation. The basis for this development work is the empowering impact of art on communities that respects the northern cultural identity. Art is considered as a potential agent of fostering in sustaining, developing and regenerating communities, especially in remote northern areas.

  Biography
  Mirja Hiltunen is a professor in Art Education in the Faculty of Art and Design. She has devised a performative art strategy as part of her work in art teacher education and has been leading community-based art workshops and projects in Lapland for twenty years. Her research topic is on community-based art education in a northern sociocultural context. Her study combines concrete cultural activities, development of these activities through art education projects, and theoretical examination of the subject area. The site-specificity, performativity and social dimensions of art are particular interests to her, and she has published numerous papers in this area.

• Timo Jokela

  Timo Jokela

  Professor of Art Education and Dean of the Faculty of Art and Design
  University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, FINLAND

  Place-Specific Winter art Design as Innovation
  The paper presents the development of winter art design methods in Finland. To create new innovation we combined applied visual art and design expertise of the Faculty of Art and Design of the University of Lapland with cold climate engineering expertise of the Lapland University of Applied Sciences. We were aiming to create new and competitive services based on design approach, which helps to utilize the multi-disciplinary snow and ice expertise in various events and tourism services in local and international forums.

  We are now able to support the development work of winter art design by action research based training in different areas, such as educational institutions, cultural and social sector and particularly the tourism sector. The research activities may focus on areas such as reinforcing local identity, visualize cultural heritage, supporting psychosocial wellbeing, preventing social exclusion and participating in community empowerment activities. Winter art is seen as environmental, community, culture and education oriented activity, which seeks to strengthen its expertise in the field of regional competitiveness and wellbeing.

  Biography
  Professor of Art Education and Dean of the Faculty of Art and Design, University of Lapland. Leader of the Thematic Network on Arctic Sustainable Arts and Design, University of Arctic.
  Chair of Institution for Northern Culture, Lapland University Consortium. Environmental artist.

• Glen Coutts and Elina Härkönen

  Glen Coutts and Elina Härkönen

  Department of Art Education, Faculty of Art and Design
  University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, FINLAND

  Challenge and Opportunity: Arctic Art & Design
  At a time when interest in the opportunities and challenges of the Arctic area has increased globally, the need for new ways of looking at old problems has never been more urgent. The new Arctic Art and Design (AAD) programme at the University of Lapland responds to these shifting conditions by drawing on the strengths of both art and design. The two disciplines work together to enhance well-being and business activity in northern and Arctic areas. AAD brings together local agencies and has the support of a strong international network across the Arctic area. - AAD uses artistic, scientific and design thinking to solve problems particular to Arctic environments and empathy with Arctic circumstances is at the core of AAD philosophy. Students of AAD are trained to identify, analyze, and help solve challenging and even ’wicked’ problems. Students are also encouraged to apply the principles of sustainable development and their expertise to conditions outside the Arctic region.

  Biography

  Glen Coutts is Professor of Applied Visual Arts at the University of Lapland in Finland. He was Reader in art and design education at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow until April 2010. He writes regularly about issues in art education and is currently Vice President of the International Society for Education through Art (2014- 2017) and Principal Editor of the International Journal of Education through Art. His teaching and research focuses on the interface between formal and informal art education and, particularly, the pedagogical potential of community based art practices.

  Elina Härkönen (MA, M.Ed) works as a project coordinator in the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Lapland. She holds a Masters degree in Arts and in intercultural teacher Education. For her art education masters she studied the motives of participation in community-based art education. Before joining University of Lapland she has been working several years as an Elementary School teacher and an art educator.

• Joe Kashi

  Joe Kashi

  Soldotna, Alaska

  An Integrated and Sustainable Community-Based Art Initiative
  Soldotna’s ARTSpace and Rotary Club of Soldotna are implementing a public art program that provides exposure and support for emerging artists. All aspects are integrated and mutually supporting, requiring only easily sustained effort and minimal long-term cost. - Major Activities:

  1. Strong community partnering.
  2. An annual professionally-curated Emerging Artists Festival, judged upon submitted bodies of work.
  3. Curated 4’x8’ outdoor murals, eight up to date.
  4. A grouping of permanent outdoor display cases in Soldotna parks suitable for curated summer exhibits by students and emerging artists.
  5. A “drawers” program at Soldotna Library providing access to curated 2D and 3D bodies of work.
  6. Annual curated fine art photography competition based upon bodies of work.
  7. Training for community artists to prepare and copyright high-quality photo books of their own work.
  8. A curated archive of such books for long-term public reference at the Soldotna Public Library.
  9. A biennial book of selected artists and work drawn from this program.
  10. An annual no-commission no-fee direct artist to invited buyer exhibit and sale.

  Biography
  I am a trial lawyer by trade and a fine art photographer and community arts facilitator by inclination. I graduated from MIT in 1973 with BS and MS degrees and from Georgetown University Law School in 1976 with a JD degree. I was first introduced to the arts by “casually” studying fine-art photography at MIT with Minor White while pursuing other disciplines. I have practiced law since moving to Soldotna, Alaska in 1977 and have been a highly active officer of several arts-related, professional, and community organizations. Since 2007, I have mounted a dozen solo exhibits of art-oriented photography and have been regularly accepted into Rarified Light and other statewide juried exhibits.

• Danielle Larsen

  Danielle Larsen

  Anchorage, Alaska

  Alaska Native Art: Seal gut/hog gut drum earrings workshop
  In this workshop you will learn how to make a seal gut or hog gut earrings. You will cut out a small piece of seal gut or hog intestine to fit around a small ring. You will pick out a large bead and a smaller bead to bead around the ring. Then you with bead a simple bead stitch around the ring.

  Biography
  Danielle Larsen is of Unangan, Koyukon, Iñupiaq, Scandinavian and European heritage raised in Anchorage, Alaska. Her father John E. Larsen, Jr. was a businessman, fisherman and engineer from King Cove, Alaska and her mother, Florence A. Wiehl, is from Beaver, Alaska. She earned her Bachelor Art of Degrees in English Literature in 2003 and Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and Alaska Native Art in 2015 from the University of Alaska Anchorage. She learned how to sew the intestine from a partnership with the Anchorage Museum and the University of Alaska Anchorage in a week long artist residency with master artists: Mary Tunuchuk, Elaine Kingeekuk and Sonya Kelliher-Combs.

• Constance Lutz

  Constance Lutz

  Postdoctoral Researcher
  Department of Art Administration, Education, and Policy
  The Ohio State University

  Valuing Traditional and Indigenous Approaches to Learning: Cultural Considerations in Assessment of Student Learning in Visual Art
  There are traditional Native Alaskan ways of knowing and learning that can be benefit all students during the assessment of student learning in the arts. The assessment of student learning in design and visual arts education classrooms can unfortunately rely solely on power-based, Western strategies that reinforce conformity resulting the loss of learning and individualism. These negative and oppressive practices can be replaced with humanistic and collaborative assessment strategies facilitated by incorporating traditional ways of indigenous peoples of Alaska. My research on art teachers uses of assessment paired with my experiences of over two decades of teaching art in Alaska informs this workshop as does information on culturally responsive education; high-context cultures; and traditional learning and knowledge pathways. Through this interactive, art-making workshop, art education assessment practices that reflect traditional and indigenous approaches that foster student learning will be presented and practiced.

  Biography
  Connie moved to Alaska in the early 1980s and taught preK-12 art in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District for nearly two decades before moving into district administration to oversee the curriculum and assessment for all content areas. Her understanding of the interrelationship amongst curriculum, instruction and assessment for culturally responsive student learning lead to her presenting and consulting throughout Alaska. Her roles in visual art in Alaska include team member for writing the state standards for the visual arts, founding board member of Very Special Arts Alaska and the Alaska Arts Education Consortium, the art coordinator for two community-constructed playgrounds, set designer for community theatre, and representing Alaska in the National Art Education Association Delegates Assembly. Connie’s research is in visual art teachers’ uses of assessment and the role of the student in the assessment process.

• Justine Pechuzal

  Justine Pechuzal

  'A Good Place to Live'
  Seward, Alaska

  School Murals as Expressions of Environment and Culture
  This presentation investigates how collaborative school murals serve as a platform to express collective ideas about identity, culture and environment specific to communities in the North. For the past five years, I have worked throughout Alaska creating murals during two week artist in residency programs offered through the Artists in Schools Program and other entities. Participating schools range from grades k-12 and serve native and non-native students in rural and urban settings. This work affords a unique perspective on Alaska's people and geography: similarities determined by life in a Northern environment, such as an emphasis on subsistence practices, or the different nuances specific to each place, be it a favorite look-out point or significant local animal. I make this work because I believe in the importance of self/collective expression via public art that honors the relationship between natural environments and the people who are their stewards.

  Biography
  Justine Pechuzal is an art educator and artist based in Seward, Alaska whose work investigates concepts of place, community, and environment via public and fine art. Originally hailing from the Southwest, Justine earned a bachelor’s degree in art history and creative writing with a studio art minor, as well as a master's degree in art education, from the University of Arizona. Justine moved north to guide sea kayaking trips and found a niche creating murals. She is a board member of the Seward Arts Council and teaching artist through the ASCA Artists in Schools program. You can see examples of her work at www.justinepechuzal.com

• Roxane Permar and Susan Timmins

  Roxane Permar and Susan Timmins

  University of Highlands and Islands, Shetland College, UK

  Northern Exchange: Navigating Cross-Cultural Perceptions of the Cold War
  During 2014 we undertook research and development of new work based on perceptions of the Cold War by travelling on both sides of the former ‘iron curtain’ in Russia and the United Kingdom. We engaged with a diverse range of people from those who were actively involved with civilian and military operations during the Cold War to young people who were born after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In this presentation we will consider issues that arise in the process of using contemporary art practices to facilitate mutual understanding across cultural and political borders with specific reference to the northern and Arctic regions. Can art help us to investigate the Cold War period as it exists physically in the landscape and in the memory of northern and Arctic communities? Can art enable our re-imagination of this period in the face of its ideological differences and political tensions?

  Biography
  Roxane Permar and Susan Timmins were born during the Cold War which overshadowed their lives until they were in their late thirties. Originally from North America, they have lived in the UK since the mid-1970s, settling in Shetland during the 1990s. Collaboration plays an important role in each of their practices. Previously they collaborated on The Nuclear Roadshow (Shetland, 1990) and the participatory project, Domestic Dialogues (Shetland & Russia, 2007). They began working together again in 2011 to develop their shared interest in the Cold War, drawing on their diverse interests, experiences and skills. Permar uses textiles, film and social exchange to realize public projects and sculptural installations, while Timmins focuses on photography, sound and moving image. In 2014 they were awarded a Creative Scotland Artists’ Bursary to further develop their collaborative projects on the Cold War period.

• Eija Rajalin

  Eija Rajalin

  Senior Lecturer
  Business and Culture
  Lapland University of Applied Sciences

  Using Project Pedagogy in a Production-based on Idea of Contemporary Art
  Project sand carving started in April. Project was leaded by artist Janne Andberg and me. Sand Sculptures came to the edge of Victoria Square, the city of Tornio designated location. Sand came from KTK (Finnish company).

  Learning Objective: The student will be able to take advantage of the sand component of the creative process. Students are able to take advantage of 3 dimensional construction works. Tornio live lesson, the contact for 2 days. The course aims to design and build a sand sculpture. During the course, students will learn a variety of skills, a three-dimensional expression and working as a group. Students will be involved in stimulating collaborative project experimenting with their own limits.

  The course material, info, preliminary assignment were in Virtual Learning Environment, Moodle. Students got comments and feedback true net about their pre-assignments from distance. Implementation was Work Shop. Result: Five different sculptures – compromises – experiences and learning results how to work together.

  Biography
  Fine Artist 1997, Vocational School of Länsipohja
  Pedagogical Studies for Teachers, Jyväskylä Polytechnic 2002
  Master of Art, 2007, University of Lapland

  Teacher in vocational school 1997 – 2001
  Lecturer in (Kemi- Tornio), Lapland University of Applied Sciences 2001 – present

• Deborah Smith-Shank  

  Deborah Smith-Shank

  Professor and Chair of the Department of Arts Administration, Education and Policy
  Ohio State University

  Mapping and Way-finding as Personal and Cultural Landscapes
  The language of maps is beautiful and filled with great potential to reveal stories of their makers and users. Old maps and newer artist-made maps use and recover entire networks of assumptions that can be exploited and upended. Conventional maps show us the way to predictable individual experiences while artworks using maps embody those experiences. They act as shorthand, metaphor, and backdrops for politically imposed boundaries, tribal identities, and certainly notions of power. Maps signify embodiment, freedom, and restriction. This presentation will highlight very interesting maps and other way-finding documents that take users to physical and imaginative locations. The presentation is set within contextual landscapes modified by GPS gizmos and the semiotic possibilities of map-ness including those that involve awareness, mindfulness, feeling, emotion, memory, and empathy.

  Biography
  Deborah L. Smith-Shank is Professor and Chair of the Department of Arts Administration, Education and Policy at The Ohio State University. She is Emeritus Professor of Art at Northern Illinois University and has taught for over 30 years. Her research is involved with material culture and social justice examined through semiotic and feminist lenses. She has published and presented her work internationally in venues including Australia, Northern Ireland, Finland, Portugal, Brazil, Chile, Canada, Croatia, Slovenia, Turkey, The Netherlands, Belgium, and the United States. Smith-Shank and is co-editor of the journal of Visual Culture & Gender, an international, freely accessed, multimedia juried journal (http://vcg.emitto.net/).

• Wenche Sørmo, Karin Stoll, and Mette Gårdvik

  Wenche Sørmo, Karin Stoll, and Mette Gårdvik

  Nesna University College, NORWAY

  Global Junk as Site Specific Art
  Marine litter is a Global problem for human beings and animals. It`s found in huge amounts in the Arctic Costal Area, which makes it an extra challenge for the wildlife. The Norwegian Coastline is 100915 km. It`s important that new generations get a genuine understanding of the nature and motivation to act in a sustainable manner. This spring semester Schools and Kindergartens have participated in a project where they learned about marine litter, cleaned a local beach, sort and built Sea Monsters from it before recycling.

  We will present the development, implementation and final exhibition of an interdisciplinary project that focuses on Marine Litter. We combine natural science and art to focus on a Global problem in a local setting. By engaging children, teachers and local media we use art as resource to spread knowledge to local communities about marine litter. Experiences from the project will be presented.

  Biography
  Wenche Sørmois is Associate Professor at the Institute for Teacher Education, Department of Natural Science at Nesna University College in Northern Norway. She has a Ph.D. in comparative physiology from the Department of Arctic Biology at the University of Tromsø, specializing in the adaptations in the digestive system of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus sp.). She has been working with teacher education since 2006, and has been important in the University College's work to develop a multidisciplinary, active, site specific and outdoor teacher education profile where the topics natural science and arts and crafts are central.

  Karin Stoll is Assistant Professor at the Institute for Teacher Education, Department for Natural Science at Nesna University College in Northern Norway. Prior to this, she worked as a biological scientist at the University of Erlangen/Nürnberg, Germany and as an education officer for the Natural History Museum in Eastern Bavaria, Germany. her current research focuses on Outdoor Education and Education for Sustainability. She is working with interdisciplinary outdoor teaching projects in Norwegian teacher education, which combine educational goals from natural science with other disciplines, especially arts and handicrafts.

  Mette Gårdvik is Associate Professor in Art and Handicraft, Institute for Teacher Education at Nesna University College. Holding a master's degree from Telemark University College, she specializes in textile, woodworking and community based art education. Her works within cultural material, Land Art and Community Art has been presented both nationally and internationally. Lately she has been part of a research group developing interdisciplinary outdoor teaching projects that combines creative learning skills and educational goals in art and handicraft with natural science.

• Sofie Weinbull

  Sofie Weinbull

  Umeå University
  SWEDEN

  Site-specific Art that Invites to Interactive Participation
  How to create an artwork that partly affects one's inner world, and partly interact with the place and also with the meeting with a participating observer. In my lecture I will describe some of my interactive artwork I created for both adults and children. Then I will show you some of my students' work with site-specific artworks that interact with the environment. In my conclusion, I will describe how the artist's intention with the artwork affects by the meeting with the surroundings. The meaning may have changed and developed further.

  Biography
  Born 1970 in Malmö Sweden, grew up near Stockholm. Master's degree in 1997 at the Art Academy in Umeå. Living with her family outside Umeå. Works as Artistic Senior Lecturer on Department of Creative Studies Umea University. Sofie's main focus is sculpture with a broad knowledge of different techniques. She also works in other areas of art in different art projects, with commissioned works and teaches art to adults and children. She describes her artistic work as a research and inventing. She distorts and twists reality to absurd and surrealist creations.

• Aron Crowell

  Aron Crowell

  Dr. Aron L. Crowell is an Arctic anthropologist and Alaska Director of the Smithsonian Institution's Arctic Studies Center. His research and publications in cultural anthropology, archaeology, and oral history reflect collaborations with indigenous communities of the north and with major museums and research institutions. He is the curator and project director of the Smithsonian exhibition Living Our Cultures, Sharing Our Heritage: The First Peoples of Alaska at the Anchorage Museum and directs a wide range of current programs in Alaska Native heritage, languages, and arts. Crowell has led or contributed to earlier exhibitions including Crossroads of Continents: Cultures of Siberia and Alaska; Looking Both Ways: Heritage and Identity of the Alutiiq People; and Gifts of the Ancestors: Ancient Ivories of Bering Strait. He directs archaeological research around the Gulf of Alaska from the Katmai coast to Glacier Bay, and currently leads National Science Foundation-funded research on the human and environmental history of Yakutat Bay. Crowell has a Doctorate in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley and he is an affiliate faculty member of the University of Alaska.

• Perry Eaton

  Perry Eaton

  Perry Eaton is an internationally shown Suqpiaq Alutiiq mask maker and black-and-white photographer. Growing up commercial fishing with his father in Kodiak, his career as an artist got its start when his parents enrolled him in painting lessons at age eight, hoping it would keep him out of trouble for a few hours a week.

  After studying art and business at Grays Harbor Community College in Aberdeen, WA., and apprenticing as a machinist at Boeing, Mr. Eaton turned to banking as a profession. Returning to Alaska shortly thereafter, Mr. Eaton went on to participate in some of the most pivotal institutions in the state. He began at First National Bank Alaska, moved on to the Alaska Native Foundation and served as CEO of the Community Enterprise Development Corporation of Alaska (now known as Alaska Village Initiatives) for 17 years, traveling throughout the state to develop programs cultivating economic growth in rural towns and villages.