Team 7: Black + White Studio Architects / Sonya Kelliher-Combs

Kaamos

At our site, Elderberry Park, there is the ocean, the Alaska Range, Susitna, the crackling ice and intimidating tidal water of the Knik Arm.

The streaking points ascending from the airport are the only lights we see over this vista, steel ships of incomprehensible scale sail into the cloudy abyss on the horizon. There is accumulation of snow and the wind is biting out of the north. Light-poles open space, cast shadow, reveal color, objects hide out of their reach, ghostly figures sit in half light at the edges. There are secrets and mystery in the light, everything is not illuminated and equal.

It is quiet here but the city bangs and squeals on the hill, reminding you it is there, there are people there. Here is a place where the winter still holds on with one hand.

Black + White Studio Architects

Black + White Studio Architects, an Alaskan multidisciplinary design firm, was founded by principal architect Bruce Williams. The practice investigates the people, the pasts, and the environments specific to northern regions. The firm’s architectural method distills the findings extracted from these regional influences and expresses them with clarity into space. The studio believes the north will pioneer architecture that weaves humans with their natural environment in unique & innovative ways in the coming decades. Black + White Studio Architects aspire to facilitate these advances and become an active participant in contemporary world culture.

Sonya Kelliher-Combs

Sonya Kelliher-Combs lives and works in Anchorage, Alaska. She received her M.F.A from Arizona State University and has exhibited with frequency in Alaska since 1990. Kelliher-Combs was recently included in Changing Hands 2: Art without Reservation, a group exhibition of contemporary Native American art at the Museum of Art and Design in New York, NY. She is a current fellow of the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art. She has exhibited her work throughout the United States and in Asia, with numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Institute of American Indian Art, the Anchorage Museum, and the Heard Museum.