I AM UAA: Ryan Romer

B.F.A. Printmaking '08
Hometown: Bethel and Anchorage, AK
Fun Fact: Of Yup'ik Eskimo and Athabascan descent

A nomad can be defined as an individual who roams about or a person who does not stay long in the same place. Applied to being Alaska Native in a Western society, local artist and UAA alum Ryan Romer defines his creative process as "nomadic thinking." That is, he combines the western way of thinking that he grew up with through public school and college with the aspects of storytelling and Native ideas he remembers from growing up in a rural village.

And the results are stunning.

A barber's chair under a meat drying shelter-cleverly titled "Cut and Dry." A group of snowmachiners out on the remote tundra-"Coffee Scouts." An old kayak rotting right next to a brand new boat. And in his paintings, frequently crowded with biomorphic forms, a sense of spirituality.

"Old next to new; that's my nomadic thinking process," he says. "I'm trying to address issues of being an Alaska Native and the transformation and transitions we constantly make to be people."

Born in Anchorage and raised in Bethel, Ryan had taken the requisite art classes in elementary school and junior high, and he was on the yearbook staff at Bethel Regional High School, where he was able to focus on photography. But after high school his time spent on art just kind of dropped off.

"Art is a passion I've had since childhood," he says. "But it didn't seem a like a viable way to live. Nobody says artists live a certain lifestyle; they just say they're always broke."

He finally decided to pursue an art degree at UAA, and being an artist as a career, when he was "at that age of wanting purpose in life. That milestone in life when you have to decide what path in life is going to benefit you physically and mentally. Instead of dreaming about it, I had to try it out and make it a reality." It was 2001 and he was 30 years old.

Moving back to Anchorage after a brief stint in Montana, Ryan threw himself into his art education 100 percent.

"I had no idea what art school encompassed or if the program at UAA was going to be beneficial to what I was going for," he admits. "I started with the core classes and ran across printmaking with professor Garry Kaulitz. His knowledge and enthusiasm of how the art world operated really made my decision final to become an artist."

And since graduation, Ryan's career seems to have blossomed considerably, the reality of the artist lifestyle suiting him well. He credits, in part, the recognition he gets of being a local Alaskan coming from a local university. Local exhibits to his credit are the annual juried photography show "Rarefied Light," APU's artist-in-residency "House" project and grant-funded work with the Alaska Native Arts Foundation, to name a few. And last month he exhibited an oil-and-acrylic painting with CNN's "9/11 Ripple" project -his first national exhibit.

"That is one thing UAA taught me: to be prolific in your artwork," says the former three-term president of the UAA Print Club. "Be responsive, go check galleries out and keep in contact. And even though you might not have a show planned out, you still need to be doing your artwork in case an opportunity comes up."

In the case of the CNN project, the opportunity found him. In order to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11, the assigned task was "to create or choose work to illustrate the ripple effect of 9/11-the incredible changes we've seen these 10 years as individuals, communities, a nation and a world," the curators leaving the idea of "ripple" open to artist interpretation.

Once again he applied his process of nomadic thinking. Under the tab "Symbolism," his piece is titled "Transitions to the East." In his artist's statement he says it "represents the spiritual entombment every person generates from the incidental presence of death. This is a surreal representation...to suggest movement away from a burial ground in their quest to reach another level of advancement."

Find this and other works at www.ryanromer.com .