Mark - by Julie Decker (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

An artist monograph and survey of the work of contemporary, Indigenous artist Sonya Kelliher-Combs.

In her work, Alaskan artist Sonya Kelliher-Combs offers a chronicle of the ongoing struggle for self-definition and identity in the Alaskan context. Her combination of shared iconography with intensely personal imagery demonstrates the generative power that each vocabulary has over the other. Similarly, her use of synthetic, organic, traditional, and modern materials moves beyond oppositions between Western/Native culture, self/other, and man/nature, to examine their interrelationships and interdependence while also questioning accepted notions of beauty. Kelliher-Combs' process puts her work in dialogue with ideas of skin, the surface by which an individual is mediated in culture. This beautifully illustrated monograph will introduce her work to an expanded audience who are interested in the role that art can play in commenting on land, people, climate change, and migration.

Review Quotes

"Mark offers a comprehensive analysis of a single artist's practice. . . I embraced the book's poetic and contemplative approach and patiently allowed understanding to unfold slowly, as I spent more time with Kelliher-Combs' works."

-- "Women's Art Journal"

"The paintings of Alaska Native Kelliher-Combs evoke earth, skin, and other organic elements, and her sculptures are often mysterious gatherings of minutiae: 72 little tubes of found fabric tinted subtle colors, or blood-red strings hanging from Alaskan towns on a map. This comprehensive monograph illuminates her highly poetic work with poems by Taqralik Partridge, as well as essays from curators and artists."-- "American Craft"

"Beautifully-produced. . . an introduction to an extraordinary artist who deserves a much wider audience."-- "Artblog"

About the Author

Julie Decker is the director/CEO of the Anchorage Museum in Alaska.