Support ART Sale 258 - Oppose Lease Sale 258 image

Support ART Sale 258 - Oppose Lease Sale 258

Donate $25.80 or more and we'll send you a beautiful Cook Inlet Fine Art Card Set, compiled with love by five local artists who want to #SellArtNotCookInlet!

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ART SALE 258

Artwork by (clockwise from top left) Bonnie Bernard, Liz Mering, Amy Kruse, Valisa Higman, and Kaitlin Vadla.

For a limited time, you can get a Cook Inlet Fine Art Card Set, a collaboration by five local artists from the Cook Inlet basin who came together to raise awareness about the federal government's Lease Sale 258, which would open up over a million acres of lower Cook Inlet to oil and gas development.

To encourage as many Alaskans and fellow Americans as possible to oppose the Lease Sale, you can receive the beautiful five-card set, locally printed in Kenai, Alaska by making a donation of $25.80 or more at www.inletkeeper.org/artsale. (Cards are 4x6 and include envelopes. *Specify whether you'd like to pick up at either our Homer or Soldotna office, or provide your mailing address.)

"ART sale 258" ends the same time as the comment period for the Lease Sale, at 7:59 pm on Monday, December 13th. So get your art cards and sign the petition before then! Please share with family and friends, and if you're in Soldotna, visit Inletkeeper's Community Action Studio to view an exclusive selection of originals and prints available through the Art Sale 258 Collaboration. Cards will be mailed/available for pick up December 14th.

Contact Kaitlin@inletkeeper.org or (907) 252-6525 for more info.

Artist Statements:

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My name is Bonnie Bernard, and I oppose lease sale 258–and the already-finalized 257, for that matter— because the transition away from fossil fuels is not a singular move but one made up of innumerable smaller decisions. I have lived along Cook Inlet for nine years now, but I grew up on a stretch of the Louisiana Gulf Coast that has been dominated by the oil and gas industry for decades. For generations, we slowly bartered away our cultural heritage and our renewable natural resources for the promise of economic opportunity. To be sure, there were opportunities— but there were also constant layoffs, mergers, and revoked pensions. My dad, a forty-year veteran of the refineries, didn’t allow me to swim in the lake down the road. And before we ate the fish we caught on weekends, we called in to check that week’s mercury levels.

I am the now-grown daughter of those economic opportunities, but I also am still the little girl who read the warnings on her dad’s various respirators on the way to school, still the young woman crying in my dorm room when they pushed my dad’s retirement back a second time. For me, transitioning away from fossil fuels isn’t just an environmental issue; it’s also about resisting worker exploitation and re-centering community and quality of life. We don’t have to keep making these deals with the devil we know. -Bonnie Bernard
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Growing up on the shores of the Cook Inlet, it has always felt as if it was a part of me. As I venture through life, the more I become aware of how everything is a balance. How the things that are closest to our hearts and lives, are the most sacred. How shifting in a delicate balance can put into motion devastating and irreversible effects. I am not alone in my great affinity for our pristine coastal home and when something is sacred and delicate, we must work together to protect it. -Amy Kruse

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In my lifetime, I’ve seen Clam Gulch close to clamming, king crab and herring be decimated in Kachemak Bay, salmon and halibut become a shadow of their former world record size and abundant glory. I ask myself, “What am I doing to leave this place better than I found it?” So I must speak up. With the cod fishery closed in 2020 due to rising ocean temperatures, and the rest of the world transitioning from fossil fuels, Alaska should be joining the 21st century and investing in tidal and wind power, not more oil and gas. In 2010 the Alaska legislature started subsidizing natural gas extraction with the "Cook Inlet Recovery Act." Since then, we have paid natural gas extractors $1.44 billion dollars, and we still have unpaid obligations, thanks to our legislators, to the total tune of $2.32 BILLION. For these past 10 years, Cook Inlet's natural gas prices have been around $3 - $4 more than L48 prices, and drilling for more gas won't solve the problem, it will just force the local market to keep paying more for natural gas on top of subsidizing its extraction. Developing “natural” gas (which is actually methane; “natural” is supposed to be a less scary marketing term) in Cook Inlet does not make ecological OR economic sense. We can-and MUST-do better. -Kaitlin Vadla

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Since moving to Alaska I’ve learned an important lesson: always bring your camera! Alaska and Cook Inlet daily provide the most amazing pictures and experiences! This picture was taken in Lake Clark and a 19% chance of one or more large oil spills where oil could likely end up on our “bear coast” or into Kachemak Bay is unacceptable. It’s not just the bears but our endangered belugas, shorebirds, marine mammals, and fish who are at risk. And with that risk, our sustainable fishing and tourism economies are also at risk! And of course, there is climate change which is already impacting Alaska. Alaskans can stand up and stop this sale and protect Lower Cook Inlet for Alaskans for generations to come. -Elisabeth Mering

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Love of art - be it poetry, painting, song, sculpture - can overcome any obstacle man has yet devised.

Support the Inlet and the Arts by saying NO to Lease Sale 258 and YES to ART Sale 258!