San Juan Islands Museum of Art Presents Alison Stigora: Constellation
Updated: 5 hours ago
FRIDAY HARBOR, WA — The San Juan Islands Museum of Art (SJIMA) is proud to present Alison Stigora: Constellation, an immersive, site-specific installation created for the museum’s dramatic glass atrium. Commissioned by SJIMA, the exhibition brings together more than one hundred suspended sculptures made from driftwood and reclaimed shattered glass with changing natural light and sound, transforming the atrium into a shimmering environment that shifts throughout the day.
Constellation will be on view October 3, 2026–February 22, 2027.
“At its heart, Constellation is about the possibility for transformation,” says Stigora. “I’m interested in what happens when something familiar, weathered, or broken is seen in a new light—when materials associated with decay or destruction become places of beauty and wonder.”
Visitors are invited to observe the installation of Constellation as it takes shape in the museum’s atrium on September 25, 26, 27, and 28, offering a rare opportunity to witness the process behind the creation of a large-scale, site-specific installation.
A Members & VIP Reception with the artist will be held Friday, October 2, from 5–7 pm, preceding the exhibition’s public opening on October 3.
Commissioned in response to SJIMA’s architecture and its island setting, Constellation draws connections between the geography of the San Juan Islands and the networks through which people orient themselves in the world. More than one hundred unique forms hover throughout the atrium, catching and refracting the changing light. Together, these distinct elements form a larger whole: a constellation of materials, light, sound, and movement.
“Alison has conceived Constellation in direct response to this remarkable space and to the San Juan Islands themselves—an archipelago shaped by water, light, and interconnectedness,” says William Morrow, Curator-at-Large at SJIMA. “Her transformation of reclaimed materials through light, sound, and scale places the work within a rich lineage of site-responsive installation art, while creating an experience that feels entirely specific to this place.”
About the Exhibition
Stigora has worked with wood for more than two decades, exploring its capacity to register time, change, and transformation. Since moving to the Pacific Northwest in 2017, driftwood has become central to her practice. For Constellation, weathered branches and roots shaped by water, erosion, and decay are covered with fragments of reclaimed broken glass. Materials that might otherwise suggest damage or deterioration become luminous, scattering light across the museum’s walls, floor, and visitors themselves.
The installation extends this transformation through an original soundscape developed in collaboration with Rachael Fasano, a Seattle-based multi-sensory artist. Drawing from field recordings made on San Juan Island, including ferries, wind, and waves, the audio moves between deep, rumbling tones and delicate, chime-like sounds, enveloping visitors within an environment that Stigora describes through a progression of “darkness to light, death to life, brokenness to beauty.”
Throughout Constellation, apparent oppositions coexist: weight and suspension, destruction and beauty, disorientation and discovery. The title refers not only to stars, but also to islands, people, materials, and experiences—individual points that acquire new meaning through their relationships to one another.
While researching the islands’ history of celestial and maritime navigation, Stigora encountered an interpretive sign at the historic Radio Compass Station at Cattle Point on San Juan Island describing a Morse code message mariners use to seek direction through the fog:
“What is my true bearing?”
The question became a point of departure for Constellation. Rather than offering an answer, the installation creates a space in which uncertainty, wonder, and transformation can coexist, inviting visitors to look upward and encounter familiar materials—and perhaps their own surroundings—in a new way.
Stigora’s emphasis on immersive experience, material transformation, and a heightened awareness of place connects Constellation to a broader lineage of installation and site-responsive art represented by artists she admires, including Leonardo Drew, Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt, Maya Lin, James Turrell, and Olafur Eliasson. Like these artists, Stigora approaches space itself as an active material, creating an environment that changes according to the viewer’s movement, perception, and relationship to the surrounding landscape.
About the Artist
Alison Stigora is a Seattle-based site-specific artist whose work explores relationships between physical spaces, materials, and the body. Often working with found and natural materials, she creates installations that heighten awareness of human scale within the expanse of the natural and constructed world. Her practice emphasizes the transformation of familiar materials, inviting viewers to pause and encounter themselves and their surroundings in new ways.
Originally from the East Coast, Stigora holds an MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Her large-scale projects frequently involve interdisciplinary collaboration with architects, composers, engineers, dancers, and lighting designers. Previous installations include projects at Philadelphia International Airport, MadArt Studio in Seattle, and the Nes Artist Residency in Iceland. Permanent works can be found at Arte Sella Sculpture Park in Italy, Blackfoot Pathways Sculpture Park in Montana, and Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire in France, among others.
Exhibition Information
October 3, 2026–February 22, 2027
Members Reception with the Artist
Friday, October 25–7 pm
Observe the Installation of Constellation
September 25–28
Visitors are invited to observe Stigora and the installation team as Constellation takes shape in SJIMA’s atrium during regular museum hours.
About the San Juan Islands Museum of Art
The San Juan Islands Museum of Art connects people with art that inspires, challenges, and expands perspectives. Located in Friday Harbor on San Juan Island, SJIMA presents exhibitions and programs that bring artists, ideas, and communities into dialogue within the unique cultural and natural environment of the San Juan Islands.
Website: www.sjima.org
Media Contact:
San Juan Islands Museum of Art
Exhibition Support
Major support for Alison Stigora: Constellation is provided by Cultural Access San Juans, a program of San Juan County.
