Sealaska Heritage Institute is hosting Indigenous artists in public spaces across Southeast Alaska this year. The residents aim to create, showcase their artistic processes to visitors, and connect with their heritage.
Nena Howell Walton is the current artist-in-residence at Sitka National Historical Park. She’s an oil painter and certified Tlingit and Haida tribal artist with family ties to the area. Howell Walton’s grandfather, Rudolph Walton, was a famous artist and master carver from Sitka.
“It’s pretty incredible, because just being here in the Sitka area, just the air, and knowing that I’m walking on ancestral grounds where he was inspired by the bird flying over his head or feeling the mist on his face,” Howell Walton says.
Howell Walton says she’s seeking to reimagine her grandfather’s work in her own paintings. She looks to include elements of formline, a traditional art style incorporating curved lines and shapes, used by Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest.
Howell Walton says she’s starting a series of paintings while in Sitka. The series will eventually include 30 pieces, each with an owl.
“I really feel like they have that kind of wisdom and knowledge and leadership and sight forward,” she says, “and it’s my hope that we could all just get along, and this owl would lead us forward.”
Howell Walton says she hopes to study the colors traditional to Lingít art in the museum’s archive to incorporate into her own work.
“I’m going to sit down with those pieces for a number of sessions and try to create [the colors] with my own hand,” Howell Walton says.
She’ll paint the pigments onto color swatches she can later reference as she continues to work on her series back home in Washington.
You can observe Howell Walton working on her paintings at Sitka National Historical Park through July 3rd.
