APRIL 2022
IGCA Annex
Seasoned Soul | Rose Hendrickson
Rose Marie Hendrickson was born in Anchorage, Territory of Alaska, in the middle of winter. She is the oldest of seven sisters, and has one (adult) child, a daughter.
Rose has been passionate about mark-making since early childhood, teaching herself about concepts like perspective and volume from found art books, or modeling small figures from window putty, mud, children’s modeling clay, or wax. She has worked independently in many mediums, including graphite, colored pencil, pastel, watercolor, oil pastel, and oils. Early influences were the old masters of the renaissance and the iconic illustrators: Arthur Rackham, Brian Froud, Alphonse Mucha and the Hildebrandt brothers.
More recently Rose has been studying sculpture at UAA, graduating with her BFA in December, 2021. She has been devoting herself to ceramics, metal casting, and steel fabrication designs. Contemporary influences include Kesler Woodward, for his acute observations on Alaska’s changing light, and Nicholas Galanin, for his fearless incorporation of a broad range of materials in his focused pieces.
She lives and practices her art in Palmer, Alaska, where she is also a musician, gardener, gatherer, and nature lover in general.
Artist Statement
The rhythm of our seasons is my breath and my heartbeat. There is a symbiotic intertwining between that rhythm and my very soul that grounds me here in this place through the passing of time.
The seasons are a light map, a timekeeper, a compass directing life. Here, the endless winter darkness robs the breath, chills the bones and slows the heart to the tempo of hibernation. The welcome spring quickens the soul with joy and the hope of new life. The glorious summer drenches us in eternal light, filling our days with riotous color and abundance. The golden fall brings a tang to the air while the changing foliage, with bittersweet glory, warns of the coming dark.
Our extremes of light, temperature and terrain have challenged artists from among the first inhabitants forward to communicate the unspeakable beauty, power, scale and the seasonal light that have surrounded us here throughout time. The cycle of the seasons in this unique place focuses a sense of the Sublime: boundless, breathtaking, even terrifying. Our seasons and terrain can nurture, or kill, but they will never fail to inspire.
Against the pandemic framework that has so impacted our lives, I see the pure, relentless constancy of time and the endless roll of the seasons, one into another, year after year. I find comfort in this constancy.
We are so temporary. We get sick, we die, constant in our inconsistency, flickering against the backdrop of time. The seasons weave that backdrop. They breathe in their own rhythm. They do not stop for pandemics… and even the coldest depths of the whispering winter hold the promise of the coming spring.