Winter Nights Art

Jan Steinbright, a friend of mine's mom and a good supporter of Bird TLC, has started a blog on her artwork and her books. It's called Winter Nights Art.

I became a fan of Jan's a few years ago when I purchased her books at the Bird TLC auction. Since then she published another one called Raven House Mouse. It's a childrens book about Tlingit culture and a mouse that did live behind a dryer at the clan house called Raven House. She wrote it for Austin Hammond, a great Tlingit leader who operated a culture camp in Haines on the Chilkoot River for youth so they could learn about Tlingit ways of doing things and values. The book is beautifully illustrated by Robert Davis, a very fine Tlingit artist using Northwest Coast formline drawings.




Jan stories catch your attention and it tells you about a part of Alaska few people get to know about. Yes I did say it was a childrens book, but I couldn't put it down until I finished it. Read it yourself and you'll see exactly what I mean.


The blog is also about her art work that she creates at her home in Sitka, Alaska overlooking Mt. Edgecumbe. As she says, her artwork is immersed in this imagery from the kelp baskets, pendants and pins she makes from locally-gathered macrosystis and bull kelp to raku sculpture and paintings of marine mammals.


I hope you find her work as interesting as I do and check out her blog. I'm sure you're going to want to also read her books, especially Raven House Mouse no matter what age you are.