Somer Hahm
Interdisciplinary Artist
Square and Compass
48" x 48"
Acrylic on Canvas
2020
I’m an Alaska-based interdisciplinary artist creating painting, drawing, soft sculpture, murals, and mixed-media installations rooted in my experiences as a caregiver, educator, and community builder.
Wild Blueberry and Troth Blossoms Barn Quilt
Located at the Fairbanks Experimental Farm, University of Alaska Troth Yeddha campus
Installed in August 2022
I build my artistic practice around community. Coordinating grassroots public art projects—and launching Alaska’s first quilt trail—showed me how much I thrive in the space between idea and execution. That project required vision, persistence, and the ability to bring many voices to the table. Since then, I’ve continually sought opportunities that center collaboration, leading to partnerships with granting organizations, nonprofits, local businesses, and art lovers statewide. Community outreach isn’t something I do on the side; it’s core to how and why I make work.
Rooted in locality, relationships, and everyday gestures, my studio practice explores the liminal spaces of domestic labor, maternal impulse, and belonging. Moving between “hi” and “lo” art, I turn to humble hardware-store materials to elevate the ordinary and complicate notions of value and permanence.
One of the great pleasures of painting is learning about the material
- Peter Doig
As an artist/parent I face several challenges sustaining a professional art practice. For the last decade, I have worked without a permanent studio space and with limited time while balancing my family's needs for a nurturing caregiver. Developing strategies that allow me to be resilient within these constraints has led me towards a path of discovering new and unconventional ways of making work. Conveniently adaptable to a kitchen table studio, shrinky dinks or a media also known as “shrinkles”, organically established a place in my practice through craft play with my children. The humble nature of this material appeals to my underlying interests in the hi-lo, the Folk Arts and the utility of drawing.
CAT TOWN was an ephemeral landscape exhibited at the Lemonade Stand, a mobile art gallery, housing feline characters frolicking, working, playing games, completing tasks and doing things that you do everyday and maybe never think about. Inspired by locality, interpersonal relationships, gestures, and lessons learned while being with loved ones, this work evokes a vision of a home place that is altogether remembered, imagined, and dreamed.
Sketchbook Page 10: Worst Case Scenario
Sketchbook Page 7: Baby Steps
Sketchbook Page 2: Breathing Cold Air
Sketchbook Page 9: Threads Connect Milestones
Sketchbook Page 11: Between and Within Walls
Sketchbook Page 4: Inside and Out
For the past decade, my partner and I have been building a house on the outskirts of Fairbanks, Alaska. Utilizing out of pocket funding and our own two hands, we have constructed a 2,400 sq ft. dwelling with a dedicated studio space. The culmination of this long term endeavor is in sight. Accomplishing this monumental task while raising children, working in my creative field and sustaining a professional art practice has required steadfast dedication, teamwork, and a vision for a home that will accommodate our family's growing needs.
Recently, I've prioritized my sketchbook practice. Working at the kitchen table with supplies easily pulled out/put away is a mode of being creative that is accessible to me. A place to play, my sketchbook is a nonlinear record, where exploration and process take the reins. Evoking memories, dreamscapes, worst case scenarios and the mundane, the drawings also test infant ideas for future works.
The Mother Braid: Their Mood Is Not My Mood
Fiber, thread, batting
2021
The Mother Braid was born from the daily ritual of braiding my daughter's long hair. I began exploring fiber as a medium in our small cabin while caregiving. What object is more comforting, more motherly, than a handmade quilt? Transcending function - a quilt warms the heart as well as the body. Working hands-on with discarded quilts and reimagining the textile as form has been a window into other caregivers' thoughtful household labor.
My commitment to community-centered creative work naturally extends into my role at the Folk School, where I have taught Painted Quilt workshops since 2022. These classes allow me to translate the values behind the quilt trail—collaboration, place-based storytelling, and accessible art making—into hands-on experiences that invite participants to contribute their own voices to Alaska’s creative landscape. Through teaching, I continue to build the same sense of connection and shared authorship that grounds my public art practice.
Studio News
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