Front door of the cabin with a photo of the interior before deconstruction
For the past two summers, artist Sean Derry, Art and Design Department, has lived on the south side of Kachemak Bay while carefully deconstructing a homesteading cabin dating from Alaska’s statehood. He has transformed the artifacts and building materials harvested from the cabin into a body of artwork that utilizes the erasure of the cabin as a process from which to explore decolonizing Alaska. Sean’s exhibition, From Always Until Now, opened at Bunnell Street Arts Center in Homer, Alaska, on Friday, March 7, 2025, and will remain on display until April 2.
Erasure of the cabin is a parallel investigation of multiple ideas, including colonization, domesticity, and remediation. Sean hopes to promote a form of migration that lacks the injuries of colonization. He said, “Key to this ideal is accepting the knowledge already present in a location and remaining mindful of how one’s presence alters the identity of a place. I hope that erasure of the cabin can exist as both an open investigation and an apology.”
Through his work, Sean challenges destructive notions of masculinity by embodying activities that prioritize empathy and repair.
In remote parts of Alaska, a building is typically removed by burning it. Fire would have quickly erased the structure, but Sean felt the process was wrong. He wanted the unmaking of the cabin to demonstrate conviction, and therefore, he began meticulously reversing the construction process. Two years after Sean pulled the first nail from the cabin, all that remained of the structure was a plywood floor and rusty wood-fired cookstove.
Gallery installation of “From Always Until Now”
Read Sean’s posts about the process of erasing the cabin on Instagram: @sean_derry
Location
Evidence has established the continuous use of Kachemak Bay by Dena’ina and Sugpiaq groups for the past 1,500 years, and before them, the Kachemak people settled in the area almost 3,000 years ago. Russian and European prospectors arrived in the late 1700s, and the US bought Alaska from Russia in 1867. Herring salteries were abundant in the area in the early twentieth century until overfishing decimated the population by the late 1920s.
The 79-acre site of the cabin was claimed after WWII with special veteran provisions in a revision to the 1862 Homestead Act. In 1959, Alaska was proclaimed a state, and around this time the cabin was floated on a steel barge to its final location. The cabin was first occupied by a fisherman and later a schoolteacher as well as a biologist and workers trying to remediate the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The structure provided shelter until the late 1990s.
The remains of the cabin
Oil Spill, a wall mirror with artifacts from the cabin
IUP Department of Art and Design