Kitty Sopow, an artist and anthropologist based in Nome, Alaska, brought her sticker and textile art to the Pacific Marine Expo in Seattle. Sopow, now thirty-six, has been making and selling art all her life but has shifted from painting to making fishy stickers and magnets. “I move around a lot,” says Sopow. “And paints are heavy and messy. So, I started working on the computer and turning my art into stickers. I also do magnets if people ask me, but they are heavier, and the shipping costs go up.”
Sopow’s sticker images draw from her life and ideas that friends and family suggest. Most are fishy but often with a humorous or sexy twist. “I have to mention Carla Harris,” says Sopow. “She’s an older woman here in Nome and she comes up with these ideas. She said, make a sticker with two legs and a pair of Xtratufs with panties pulled down around them.’ I said, what kind of panties? She said, ‘a frilly red thong.’”
Another, The Full Monty, features a fisherman sprawled across a big plastic fish box wearing nothing but an artfully placed fish. “Robbie Bruce runs a tender in Sitka and his son takes pictures like that, so he sent one to me, and I turned it into a sticker,” says Sopow.
Many of Sopow’s other stickers are tame in comparison to the ones of babes with fish, yet they often have a twist, such as a rendition of Grant Wood’s famous painting American Gothic, where the farmer holding the pitchfork, and his wife both have fish heads. “That one was my idea,” says Sopow, as was one of a guy in a fish apron holding a potted marijuana plant. “That’s actually my dad. He loves plants, but when he saw that he was like, ‘oh no, Kitty.’”
Another sticker is simply a salmon and the words “stay wild.” Sopow also has stickers of several Nome boats, including the Golovin Bay, (hyperlink). “I’m also bringing clothes to PME,” says Sopow. “I have shirts with trout and jellyfish, sweatshirts, T-shirts with different designs. You have to come to my booth to see those. I don’t show them on my Instagram.” Sopow adds that she has all sizes including XXXL. “I want big guys wearing my stuff,” she says. “Big guys deserve to have cute clothes.”
Sopow shifted her focus to stickers in order to make art more accessible to fishermen. “A lot of people don’t know what to do with a painting,” she says. “You have to frame it, and you have to have a wall to hang it on. But everyone knows what to do with stickers. You can put it on your toolbox or iPad and take it with you from boat to boat.
Sopow wants to turn her sideline into a full-time business. “It’s a big investment to come down here and get a booth,” she says. “But I’d love to be able to do art full time, and I’m hoping I can get more clients.”
