UAF Department of Art Contact Information

Miho Aoki studied digital art and animation at the Advanced Computing Center for Arts and Design and received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Ohio State University. Her works have been exhibited at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, University of Alaska Museum of the North, and other art galleries. She also produces computer-generated animations for art performances and educational videos.

Wendy Ernst Croskrey is a professor at UAF. She received her MFA from The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio in 1990. She has served as an Assistant Professor at Arizona State University. Professor Croskrey has been a visiting artist and presented workshops in Alaska, Arizona, Canada, Colorado, Minnesota and Texas. She has commissions in various regions of the country including Alaska and the Midwest. Solo and two person exhibitions include The University of Tasmania, Australia, Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, The International Gallery in Anchorage, Alaska, Nemo Art Gallery Anchorage, Alaska, Jeffery Tabor Gallery in Columbus, Ohio. Other invitational/juried gallery exhibitions include The Babuino Arte in Rome, Italy, The Poimena Gallery in Tasmania, Australia, University of Alaska Museum in Fairbanks, Alaska, the ASU Art Museum in Tempe, Arizona, the University of Hawaii Art Gallery, Beijing, China, and Chuck Leviton Gallery in New York.

Mareca has been with the museum since 2008. She was born and raised in Fairbanks with many years abroad in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany and Spain. She studied studio art and art history in Hills Road Sixth Form College in Cambridge and graduated with a degree in Studio Art from Carleton College in 2003 and an MFA from California Institute for the Arts (CalArts) in Los Angeles, CA in 2007.

Somer Hahm is a visual artist and a visitor living and working on the ancestral lands of the Tanana Dene peoples, also known as Fairbanks, Alaska. She received a BFA from University of Montana, Missoula in 2005 and an MFA, with an emphasis in Painting and
Drawing, from University of Alaska, Fairbanks in 2008.

With robust involvement in the Fairbanks art community, Somer exhibits her work statewide and teaches painting and drawing workshops for the Folk School of Fairbanks and Well Street Art Company and is an Adjunct Professor of Drawing at the University
of Alaska - Department of Art. Employment as Fairbanks Arts Associations Exhibition Technician, installing rotating exhibits at Bear Gallery, allows her to work one on one with Alaskan artists in all career stages and hands on with a diverse variety of art works.

Motivated to create community involvement and interest in public art, Somer founded the Far North Quilt Trail in 2019. In 2020, Hahm received a Rasmuson Individual Artist Project Award, funding from the Alaska Chapter of the Awesome Foundation, the Alaska State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment of the Arts to further her artist-led endeavor of creative place making, initiating Alaska’s first barn quilt trail. Somer is a mother of two young children.

Jessie Hedden is a painter, sculptor and printmaker who lives in Fairbanks, Alaska.  She delights in the experience of drawing from observed subjects playing one form off another in a visual, rhythmic dance. Unique to Jessie’s work is her ability to move between abstraction and representational imagery and her skillful articulation of form in various mediums.  

Hedden received her Master’s degree in painting from the University of Washington in 2004.  She previously received a Bachelor’s degree in art at Hampshire College in 1997 and soon thereafter moved to Fairbanks.  For the past 20 years she has been a teaching adjunct in the Art Department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. 

Her upbringing in rural Maine including frequent trips to New York City gave her the best of both worlds, an appreciation of nature and exposure to great art.  On a three-week road trip across the United States, Jessie arrived in Fairbanks and unexpectedly she fell in love with Alaska.  

She has had solo exhibitions throughout Alaska, notably at Georgia Blue Gallery and the International Gallery both in Anchorage.  Other shows include one at the University of Alaska Kenai as well as multiple shows at the Bear Gallery at Pioneer Park and Well Street Art Company in Fairbanks. She also was a member of the Bowery Gallery, a respected artist co-op in New York City for thirteen years where she exhibited five times. 

Jamie Smith is the creator of the Alaskan cartoon feature “Nuggets” appearing weekly in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner since 1988. He also teaches drawing classes, participates in artist residencies, and gives presentations, demonstrations, workshops, and does freelance illustration for clients throughout the community. MFA Sequential Art, Savannah College of Art & Design.