The Ursa Major Fund announces $60,000 has been awarded to twelve Alaska artists / arts collectives to fund twelve projects in 2026. This is the first award cycle of the Ursa Major Fund, an annual grant program for Alaska artists administered by Bunnell Street Arts Center as a Regional Regranting Program of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. This year’s awards reach Alaska communities in Aleknagik, Anchorage, Douglas, Fairbanks, Homer, Juneau, Kodiak, Kotzebue, and St. Paul, Aleutians & Pribilof Islands. The Ursa Major Fund supports artist-led, risk-taking, public-facing projects that inspire curiosity, engagement, dialogue and respect for cultural integrity by Alaska artists and artist groups.

Panelists of this first cycle of the Ursa Major Fund were Ashley DeHoyos Sauder, curator of DiverseWorks and an organizer of a full range of visual, performing, and public arts programming; Nicolas Galanin, Lingít/Unangax̂ multi-disciplinary artist whose work expands and refocuses the intersections of culture, centering Indigeneity through concept, form, image, and sound; Keren Lowell, a visual artist with a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Northern Colorado and an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and; Juan Manuel Silverio, a curator, writer, and arts administrator invested in championing and building community with artists, curators, creatives, and cultural workers from LGBTQ+, Black, Indigenous, and communities of color across Los Angeles (Tovangaar) and beyond.

 

 

Grant Recipients and Project Descriptions:

Bev Cole – Kodiak, Alaska
Creative Circles: No-Cost Art Workshops for Seniors & Community Access Fund, $1000

Bev of Heart Rock Club is a printmaker and multimedia artist whose work is rooted in curiosity and building an accessible, inclusive community through art-making. She will offer free hands-on art workshops exploring printmaking techniques at the Kodiak Senior Center and have a Community Access Fund available to help remove financial barriers for participants in her other community workshops.

 

Desiree Hagen & Christina Nelson – Kotzebue, Alaska
Papermaking in the Northwest Arctic, $1,000

Desiree Hagen and Christina Nelson will host free workshops in Kotzebue to connect Northwest Arctic residents with the natural world using local plants for papermaking, dye and pigment-making. Hagen is a papermaker and visual artist, and Nelson is a multi-media artist and wildlife biologist.

 

Sasha Kramer, Chase Farber & alistair goodson smith – Anchorage, Alaska
Where Worlds Meet – an immersive, interactive, traveling art exhibit, $1,000

This multi racial, gender expansive, disabled art collective invites others to a day of art, reflection, and connection in Anchorage. Explore worlds, build relationships, and share food while experiencing other worldly art inspired by the group’s various ancestral lineages.

 

Ethan/Kayaaní J Lauesen – Fairbanks, Alaska
The Dream Show, $1,000

Denaakk’e Koyukon Athabaskan and Lingit artist Ethan/Kayaani J Lauesen creates paintings, prints and drawings as an intimate response to public perceptions of their Indigenous and Queer identities. They will create new prints about dream space and curate a juried show open to artists throughout Alaska about artwork that explores dreams.

 

Amber Webb – Curyung, Aleknagik, Alaska
Traditional Ceremony for Anna Yukluk, $4,000

Amber Webb is a Curyung tribal member of primarily Yup’ik and Norwegian ancestry who resides at Aleknagik Lake.
She will create a caribou tooth belt and carve a ceremonial mask, then hold a ceremony at Kanakanak Beach near where Anna Yukluk was killed at Kanakanak Orphanage in 1929 to tell her story, dance her mask and belt, and send her mask into the unseen.

 

Sarahlily Stein – Northwest Alaska
Selawik Refuge Arts Programming for Communities Served by Selawik National Wildlife Refuge, $4,000

Sarahlily Stein is a Homer-based visual artist and naturalist who will offer arts workshops that blend botany, visual art, and local environmental knowledge for rural communities served by Selawik National Wildlife Refuge.

 

Nadia Sethi – Homer, Alaska
A Love Letter to Our Glaciers, $4,000

The Alaska Native Museum Sovereignty program is a grassroots collective of Alaska Native scholars, curators, artists and museum professionals directed by Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi, an art historian, museum consultant and member of the Ninilchik Native Tribe. A Love Letter to Our Glaciers is an ongoing research project that explores relationships to glaciers by conducting research and documentation at local glaciers, inviting artists to create new work, and writing about the research to share in the digital journal Forging.

 

Garrett Iĝayux̂ Pletnikoff & Hannah Atsaq Zimmerman (Tukuuludaa) – St. Paul, Aleutians & Pribilof Islands
Sirgiiyax̂ kayux Laaqudam quhmaa (Sergie and the White Seal), $4,000

Tukuuludaa, a Bering Sea-based design and education collective, envisions a sustainable economic future for coastal Western Alaska grounded in handcraft and generations of Indigenous biocultural knowledge. The collective retells Rudyard Kipling’s “White Seal” Jungle Book from a modern and Unangan perspective using art, Indigenous language and an audio-book in association with an art installation that showcases characters from the forthcoming novel Sirgiiyax̂ kayux Xulustaakam Quhmaa, Sergie and the White Seal, crafted from local materials and using traditional methods from St. Paul Island.

 

Jennifer Younger – Juneau Sitka, AK
Intertwined: Returning To Our Roots, an exhibit in Aan Hit, $10,000

Jennifer Younger is an award-winning Tlingit artist of the Eagle/Drum House of Klukwan, raised in Yakutat and now based in Sitka. She will curate an exhibit highlighting cultural revitalization of Yakutat Tlingit spruce root weaving with an exhibition, free talks, hands-on workshops and an artist market to foster intergenerational learning and mentorship in collaboration with Tlingit master weaver Jennie Wheeler and her students.

 

Klara Maisch & Katie Ione Craney – Fairbanks, Alaska
Gulkana: An Online Visual Archive of One Glacier and Its Surroundings, $10,000

Visual artist, Klara Maisch, and interdisciplinary artist and researcher, Katie Ione Craney, will create an archive as a collective memory of place through imagery that explores human and more-than-human connections with C’ulc’ena’ Łuu’ / Gulkana Glacier.Through community contributions and collective storytelling, the project aims to challenge colonial narratives and reveal more expansive ways of thinking and being in relation with the glacier.

 

Rachael Juzeler – Douglas, Alaska
Igniting Creative Thought – Constructing a Glass Furnace in Collaboration with Community & Art Glass Mentors, $10,000

Rachael Juzeler is a multifaceted artist with a practice rooted in craft, specializing in kiln-worked glass, mosaic, public art and creative reuse. Rachael will construct a glass furnace at her studio on Douglas Island to advance her innovative glass work and create a space to invite Alaskan and international artists to join in artwork creation.

 

Tamara Wilson – Fairbanks, Alaska
2026 Summer Season of The Lemonade Stand, $10,000

Multidisciplinary artist Tamara Wilson created The Lemonade Stand, a mobile art trailer, to foster creative interaction, reach unexpected audiences and break down perceived barriers to access and viewing of art. Wilson supports and connects a range of creatives across Alaska with Alaska’s diverse population by parking The Lemonade Stand in different communities and at locations that can reach many people, such as public spaces, non-profit organizations, public schools, farmers’ markets, and established creative hubs.