Local artist Kirsten Furlong has been named the 2025 Alexa Rose Fellow. The distinction comes with a bonus — a $25,000 artistic merit award. Furlong’s work has been shown nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions. Her multimedia art projects examine “the ecological and poetic bonds we have with animals, plants and insects on lands that we collectively inhabit,” she says on her website, “from the viewpoint of a mixed race (Black/white) woman in the American West.”

Some of her recent projects consider nuclear waste in the high desert of Idaho, declining habitat in the grasslands of the Great Plains and the effects of climate change on species everywhere. In the work, animals and plants serve as both emblems of nature and as metaphors for human desires. Furlong uses detail, repetition and patterns inspired by the natural world as a representational tool in drawings and installation works while also using mark making to express emotions such as empathy, loss and longing. Furlong is also is the director of the Blue Galleries and a lecturer in the Department of Art, Design and Visual Studies at Boise State University.