Cultivating creativity

Published 9:30 pm Tuesday, January 20, 2026

On display in the Kachemak Bay Campus gallery through the end of the month is a display of student work created during last semester’s art classes, including paintings from Asia’s Freeman’s “Landscape Painting” and drawings from David Pettibone’s “Beginning Drawing.”

Freeman has been teaching at KBC for 27 years. Her personal art includes working in drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, video, installation and book arts. As a teacher, she is committed to nurturing other artists.

“I want to help others build confidence, sharpen technique and deepen knowledge of art history and the contemporary context through experimentation, discussion and exhibition,” Freeman said. “The goal for this class was to help participants learn strategies for working with oils and acrylic paints and filling their landscape paintings with light and color.”

In addition to teaching techniques, Freeman wanted to cultivate her students’ creativity as a way that they might approach their own lives.

“Cultivating your creativity is life-giving and is one of the most healing and energizing things you can do,” she said. “Making art builds meaning, fullness, agency and possibility into life. Creating releases us from the grind and from boredom and distraction. Art offers hope, creates connection and healing, and helps us release tension.”

Molly Bowen grew up in Homer and took her first art class, an online beginner drawing course through the University of Alaska Anchorage, when she was in her mid-20s. In this class, she learned not only basic techniques, but that art provided her a creative outlet.

“I’ve always struggled with mental health, but I was going through a particularly rough period at the time,” she said. “I kept drawing after the class ended and since then, art has become an emotional outlet for me, and a way to take a break from reality and find some release in a productive way.”

From drawing, Bowen began experimenting with charcoal, moving on to soft pastels and then, inspired by her friend, artist Marjorie Scholl, began playing with acrylic paints. She fell in love with oils during Freeman’s “Fill Your Landscapes with Light and Color” painting class last summer. The fall painting class was the third landscape painting class Bowen has taken with Freeman.

“At first, I was really nervous to take an in-person art class because art had always been something I did alone when I need a break from reality,” she said. “My parents and sister finally convinced me to step out of my comfort level and I’m so glad I did. Asia’s classes have taught me so much. Most importantly, to not be afraid to use bigger canvases, bigger brushes and vibrant colors and to leave brush strokes as they are. And while we do use reference photos, Asia has instilled that the painting doesn’t have to look exactly like the photo, but that I’m free to create my own interpretation.”

Inspired by photos her friend took, Bowen has two paintings on display, including “December Light on Diamond Ridge.”

“Asia’s classes forced me to carve time out for art,” she said. “It’s tough — by the time I get off work, walk the dog and make dinner, I’m out of energy. The beauty of art, though, is that it’s always there to come back to, no matter how long it’s been or what life’s thrown at me. Painting, especially Asia’s classes, have also helped steer me away from getting caught up in perfectionism. Art is messy and it doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, not being perfect is where art comes alive.”

Amanda Kelly’s first painting class was “Beginning Painting” with Pettibone in 2018. Since that time, she has been painting smaller landscapes and, occasionally, still-life with traditional oils. For the past seven years, she has been exhibiting and selling her work locally, as well as participating in group shows at Homer Council on the Arts and Bunnell Street Arts Center in Homer and in Anchorage.

She took Freeman’s recent painting class because she enjoys learning from different artists.

“Everyone has their own style and approach and it’s helpful to gain different perspectives,” she said. “Asia’s paintings are loose and colorful. I tend to be fairly tight and literal in my work and wanted to push myself to loosen up, though I’m not sure I succeeded.”

Her painting, “Fall Colors,” is currently on display.

“My painting was based on a photo I took while out in the field for my job at Kachemak Heritage Land Trust,” she said. “I picked scenes that had a lot of detail. I struggle to imply the details rather than paint every single blade of grass, for instance, and I wanted to practice simplifying and try to loosen up by watching Asia’s techniques. I’m not sure I achieved that.”

Pettibone’s “Beginning Drawing” class introduced students to elements of drawing using wet and dry media like pencil, charcoal, conte, ink and brush, with students focusing on the composition of objects, still lifes, perspective effects and the human figure.

Pettibone started teaching art in 2008 at Brooklyn College in New York City. When he moved to Alaska, he began teaching at UAA in 2015 and has taught at KBC since 2018. A painter whose figure and landscape work weaves between abstraction and representation, he has pieces in private collections, institutions and museums, including the Anchorage Museum.

Covering a wide range of visual art examples, Pettibone’s teaching style includes ensuring that the classroom environment is a place that is both inspiring and encourages risk taking.

“In our culture, we hate taking risks in public and we hate failing,” he said. “Drawing and painting forces us, especially as we start out, to be incredibly vulnerable. Being part of a group where we are all in this together is an encouraging space (and) the students lift each other up. My goal is to meet students where they are at in their development and work with them to improve their skills. In my nearly 20 years of teaching drawing and painting at a college level, I have learned that the most important thing is that it has to be both fun and inspiring.”

Sixteen-year-old Hannah Weisser has been drawing since she was in middle school and has long been inspired by the idea of creating something that will outlive her.

“I’ve always found it beautiful that we still have pieces of art that people created beyond their life, made from their mind and hand,” she said.

Her first art class was Pettibone’s oil painting class last year and she was excited to take his drawing class this past semester.

“Something I learned from Dr. Pettibone that surprised me was that there is so much freedom in art,” she said. “Like when I was doing still lifes, I would get hung up on wanting it to be perfect, but he reminded me that there’s no way that it’s supposed to look. That took the pressure off and allowed me to be able to find my own version and expression of what I was seeing.”

Weisser’s drawing on display is a graphite pencil rendition of a high-fashion portrait photograph of model Stazia Litvin, taken by photographer Chris Knight that was inspired by the lighting techniques of Old Master painters like Caravaggio and Rembrandt. She created this piece for the class assignment of making a drawing from another image by drawing a grid of the same proportions on both the original image and the drawing paper.

“Dr. Pettibone has been a big inspiration for me and has helped me so much,” she said. “He’s so patient with all of his students and he creates a very welcoming environment to make mistakes in, so we learn that mistakes are part of the creative process. And that’s where I grow the most, where I can make the most mistakes.”

Elizabeth Pileckas is in her 40s and took her first art class, a figure drawing class with live models, more than 20 years ago when she was living in New York City. She has been taking art classes and workshops ever since. Since moving to Homer, she has participated in Freeman’s “Drawing on the Left Side of the Brain” course in 2018 and Pettibone’s drawing class last semester. She has two drawings on display, including a self-portrait and a still life.

“One thing I learned in David’s drawing class which was a really big learning curve for me, in particular for graphite drawing, was to not move on until you’re sure that your foundation is solid,” she said. “If you know your proportions in one area aren’t quite right but you keep going, the whole thing will be off. I learned to not be afraid to erase an entire chunk of work and start over. My self-portrait was the third or fourth attempt to get my face to look like my face.”

One of Pileckas’s portraits done for the drawing class was included in Bunnell Street Art Center’s November Members 10×10 exhibit.

“We are incredibly lucky in this community to have such a variety of artists participating in a variety of mediums,” she said.

Well-known in the community for her oil and watercolor paintings depicting landscapes, seascapes and flowers, Jen DePesa has been exhibiting locally since she moved to Homer in 2013, including at Grace Ridge Brewing, and her prints and originals can be found in businesses on the Spit and downtown.

On display at KBC is her drawing of a skull, created for the assignment to complete a piece in graphite or charcoal that could be any subject the students wanted as long as they challenged themselves.

“This is a charcoal piece and is unnamed, but I suppose I could name it, ‘I Did It!’” she said. “I have always wanted to be able to draw a skull and draw it well, but that seemed like such a lofty goal as the bones and teeth are so intricate and there are such subtle changes within each square inch. If you don’t get the proportions drawn right on human anatomy, people can tell right away. I drew it from a reference photo and used a grid method to ensure accuracy. It is a piece that I am very proud of, mostly because I thought I couldn’t do it on my first try.”

Mainly self-taught into adulthood, Pettibone’s class was the first drawing class DePesa has taken.

“I wanted to improve my skills as an artist — learn more about perspective, proportions and generally just how to draw,” she said. “David is one of my favorite artists and a fantastic teacher. I have learned so much from him, particularly how to find perspective and how to really see value changes.”

Beth Graber’s 14-by-17-inch pencil and ink drawing came about in response to Pettibone’s assignment to do a series of exploratory sketches of a concept without a clear, predetermined outcome.

“Not being quite sure what that meant, my past interest in zentangles’ use of repetitive patterns came to mind, so I started playing around with using one particular pattern in a variety of ways and the result became the center of the piece,” Graber said. “From there, I followed David’s suggestion to work from the center and let it grow to fill the whole page, a much larger scale than zentangle’s customary 3-inches-by-3-inches. Incorporating several more repetitive patterns as the process of filling the page unfolded, this is the drawing that emerged.”

During her 20s, Graber focused her attention on journaling, building her career and traveling over pursuing any particular art form. After moving to Homer in her early 30s, more than thirty years ago, she began taking classes in batik, Ukrainian egg decorating, watercolor painting and hand-built ceramics. Over the years she has used books and online tutorials to teach herself acrylic rock painting and zentangle, a meditative art form which focuses on drawing repetitive patterns using micron pens and graphite shading.

“Art is definitely a hobby, but now that I’m retired, I have more time to dabble, and it seems I’m drawn to the whimsical as well as realism and attention to detail,” she said. “I took David’s drawing class to help give me structure, guidance and motivation to draw, while also gaining a more solid foundation in concepts of drawing like perspective, value, light and shadows. Probably the main thing I learned from David is that we’re all artists, and that we can create unexpected and sometimes amazing things if we’re willing to challenge ourselves, practice and trust the process. I have no idea where else my interest in art will take me, but I look forward to finding out.”

Showcasing what they learned through their classes with Freeman and Pettibone, this body of student work can be viewed in the KBC Gallery through the end of the month.