Da-ka-xeen Mehner (Tlingit/N'ishga) uses the tools of family ancestry and personal history to build his art. Born in Fairbanks, Alaska to a Tlingit/N'ishga Mother and Hippy/American father his work stems from an examination of a multicultural heritage and social expectations and definitions. Da-ka-xeen was raised in two environments, one as an urban Native in Anchorage and the other as a rural Hippy in Fairbanks living without electricity, running water or phones, and heating the house with a wood stove. In particular his work has focused on the constructs of Native American identity, and an attempt to define the Self outside of these constructs. He uses the materials and tools of his family to express himself. From the steel and concrete of his Labor Union father, to the crook knife and cedar of his Alaska Native ancestors, Da-ka-xeen Mehner's artwork reflects his heritage. In an expanded view of "tradition," Da-ka-xeen also includes the inherited tools and skills of photography that were passed down to him from his maternal Uncles.  

Da-ka-xeen received his A.A. from the Institute of American Indian Arts, and his B.F.A. from the University of New Mexico. From 1994-2000 Mehner served as the founder and director of Site 21/21, a contemporary art gallery in Albuquerque, NM, and was a founding member/owner of the (Fort) 105 Art Studios in downtown Albuquerque in 1998. Da-ka-xeen returned to Alaska in 2000 and earned his M.F.A in Native Arts from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.   

His work in photography and sculpture has been exhibited from New York to California; Alaska to New Mexico. Collections include the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, the University of Alaska Museum of the North (Fairbanks, AK), and the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum (Santa Fe, NM), and the Alaska State Museum (Juneau, AK). His work has been featured in the art magazines Sculpture and American Indian Art, and in numerous newspapers, art catalogs, and blogs. He is an Assistant Professor of Native Arts at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and the director of the UAF Native Arts Center. 

Erica Lord is originally from the village of Nenana, AK, and grew up in both her village and Upper Michigan.  She is mixed-race, an identity drawn from a family of Athabaskan, Iñupiaq, Finnish, Japanese, Swedish, and English decent.

An interdisciplinary artist, Lord explores concepts and issues that exist within a contemporary Indigenous experience and how culture, and a mixed-race Native identity is affected in a rapidly changing world. In order to address a multiple or mixed identity, Lord uses a variety of media to construct new, ambiguous, or challenging representations of race.

Erica received a B.A. from Carleton College and an MFA in Sculpture/Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, the Alaska Native Arts Foundation Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Native American Art in Santa Fe, and the Musée du Quai Branley in Paris. She currently lives in Fairbanks and works in the Art department and with Tuma Theater at the University of Alaska.

website: www.ericalord.com

Website

Gerri Brightwell
Associate Professor
Director of Creative Writing
Chair, Committee for Collaboration in the Arts

I teach in the creative writing programme, specialising in fiction. My historical novel, The Dark Lantern, was published by Crown in 2008, and Cold Country, a novel about Alaska, came out with Duckworth in 2003.

Collaborative work:

Winter Journeys, Songs for Orchestra and Chorus.

Lyrics: Gerri Brightwell

Music: James Michael Bicigo (U.A.F. Music Department).

Movements from the work have been performed by the Rostern Community College Choir with the Saskatoon Youth Symphony, the U.A.F. Summer Music Academy Concert Choir, and the U.A.F. Summer Music Academy, Academy Choir

Assistant Professor, Digital Performance Media.

Co-Producer of Sundance Feature Film, "Chronic Town" (2008) and Associate Producer of indie feature "Dear Lemon Lima" (2009), Maya has also produced and directed two documentaries. She recently collaborated with scientists and film students for the International Polar Year by producing a multimedia DVD to accompany the text, Field Techniques in Sea Ice Research, due out in December. Her next film project on building in Alaska is partly sponsored by NSF. A co-author of the proposal for a UAF Film Major, she invites any students interested in majoring in film to contact her at maya@alaska.edu.

Miho Aoki - was born in Tokyo, Japan. She studied at the Advanced Computing Center or Arts and Design and received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Ohio State University in 1998. She is currently teaching digital art at University of Alaska Fairbanks and is a joint faculty of the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center. Her art works have been exhibited at Well Street Art Gallery (Fairbanks, AK), MTS Gallery (Anchorage, AK), Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (Japan), University of Alaska Museum of the North and Aichi Prefecture Ceramics Museum (Japan). Her computer generated images received the Grand Prize of TORAY Digital Creation Awards 2007. Miho participated in multimedia performances and created computer generated graphics for collaborative projects. Recently, she has been involved in Another Language Performing Arts Company's long-distance, collaborative InterPlay performances. Her computer generated animation is shown on on PBS Alaska One and also in PBS NOVA (WGBH Boston) television broadcasts.

Stephan Golux - (sgolux@alaska.edu) Stage Director, has been a freelance professional director for the past fifteen years, working happily in the established canon and very much enjoying any opportunity for the collaboration with dynamic playwrights on premieres of new plays.

World Premieres in New York City include LOOKING FOR THE PONY by Andrea Lepcio, AMERICAN PASSENGER by Theron Albis, 9TH STREET WATER by Michael Griffo, and CRAWLING FROM THE WRECKAGE by Paul Rogalus. Regionally and in New York, his favorite projects have included ENDGAME, ON THE VERGE, WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, LINE, TRUE WEST, JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS, THE POPE AND THE WITCH, and COPENHAGEN. He and his wife Kara have created a Performance Research laboratory in New York and in Vermont, bringing to a theatrical context an approach of "Bricolage" (from Claude Levi-Strauss) in the creation of performance material.

A proud member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, he holds a B.S. in Philosophy of Language from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an M.F.A. in Stage Direction from the Yale School of Drama. Further portfolio information can be found at http://director.goluxstudio.com/.

Vincent Cee teaches undergraduate courses in music education, jazz, music technology and the core curriculum. He holds music education degrees from the University of Alaska Fairbanks (B.M.), Arizona State University (M.M.) and the University of Massachusetts Amherst (Ph.D.).

Prior to doctoral studies, Vincent taught general music, elementary orchestra and high school orchestra in Mesa, Arizona. In addition to teaching, he served as a clinician, adjudicator, presenter and guest conductor for various community and statewide musical events. He recently guest conducted the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District Music in our Schools Month in March 2009, and served as an adjudicator at the Alaska Schools Athletic Association State Solo and Ensemble Festival in Anchorage in May 2009. Strongly committed to outreach, Vincent offers numerous clinics and sessions in Alaska public schools every year.

While working as a graduate teaching assistant, Vincent taught arts and music courses in the University of Massachusetts Amherst General Education curriculum. Additionally, he designed and developed online platforms for web-based arts courses. Vincent received a University of Massachusetts Amherst Distinguished Teaching Award in 2008.

Vincent’s research interests range from examining musical activity within institutions to issues in policy, curriculum and philosophy. Recently, he presented research at the International Society for Improvised Music (ISIM), The National Association for Music Education (MENC) Northwest Division Poster Session, and provided contributions to American String Teacher and the Music Educator’s Journal. In addition to research and teaching, Vincent maintains an active performance schedule with the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra, The Arctic Chamber Orchestra and numerous local jazz groups. Additionally, he recorded with Phoenix Symphony Flutist, Joe Corral on the CD release, Groovin’ Higher (Tempest Recording; 2004).

Vincent most recently joined the faculty of the UAF Alaska Summer Research Academy (ASRA) in the College of Natural Sciences and Math in 2009. He co-taught the Sounds of Science module, which included circuit bending, basic electronics, physics, acoustics and fun-based inquiry into how the world works through the phenomenon of sound. Students involved in the ASRA Sounds of Science created their own composition featuring circuit bent instruments and other sound collections using the KORG KP3 Kaoss Pad Dynamic Effect/Sampler and numerous other innovations in music and recording technology.

As a former Academic Decathlon Coach (Mesa, AZ) Vincent still finds himself reading and learning as much as possible in his spare time. He joyously serves as a volunteer for the Alaska Literacy Council.