Sealaska Heritage Institute’s artist residency program hosts Indigenous artists at public spaces in Southeast Alaska throughout summer. The residency, which expanded to Sitka this year, provides the artists room to create and connect with their heritage where visitors can stop by to watch their work come together.
Ameerah Bad’r is the current artist-in-residence at Sitka National Historical Park. Her work combines drawing, watercolor, and formline design, a traditional art style used by Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest that incorporates curved lines and shapes. Sitka’s flora will be her main subject.
“I’m working on a foxglove painting right now,” Bad’r says. “I definitely want to draw the fireweed [and] paint the fireweed. It’s a little intimidating, though. It has a lot going on.”
A lot of her work has focused on flowers from the places she’s traveled over the last few years. Bad’r says she finds it meditative to study plants’ delicate details.
“The work is kind of rooted in grieving and memory and the cycle of life,” she says. “If you can truly be present with a flower and really look at it, you’re really getting to see something beautiful. But in the end, that flower is totally going to die. But then after that, another flower is going to come back.”
Bad’r is currently based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She says she’s been wanting to come to Southeast Alaska for a long time because of her family’s roots.
“It’s a gift to be able to come here and meet people and learn more about the culture, and see where I fit in here. And I’ve learned a little bit about my family lineage already.”
She says her time in Sitka has been peaceful, and that this won’t be her last trip here. You can visit Bad’r at Sitka National Historical Park through Sept. 4.
