No'Ala Crit is a constructive and empowering critique experience for established and emerging artists in North Alabama. A crit group can be one of the best tools an artist can have to help grow and strengthen a solid, successful art practice.  Artists learn how to talk about their work and better understand how others interpret their art through critiques and open dialogue. No'Ala Crit offers small group meetings and private one-on-one sessions to pick apart both the technical skills and conceptual concerns in the work.

Aaryn is an interdisciplinary visual artist and art educator based in Huntsville, Alabama. As a transplant from the creatively mature city of Portland, Oregon, one of her goals in Huntsville, a STEM focused town, is to help foster and grow the contemporary art scene. And although she did not grow up locally, she has deep roots in this region. Her grandpa was raised in Attalla (near Gadsden),  her extended family (aunt, uncle, cousins, grandma) have lived in Huntsville since 1998, and now her whole immediate family lives in town. In 2013, Aaryn packed up my house in NE Portland, Oregon, drove across country, and landed in Huntsville.

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Aaryn has a public studio at Lowe Mill Arts & Entertainment, the largest privately owned arts facility in the south. ​In addition to her studio practice,  she is an adjunct professor at The University of Alabama in Huntsville where she teaches Drawing: Foundations and Drawing: Introduction. She will also be teaching 3D Design at The University of North Alabama in Florence as an adjunct in the spring of 2023. 

Aaryn graduated from Portland State University with  a Bachelor of Arts in Art: Art History with a Studio Concentration, Cum Laude, in 2012, and from Lesley University with a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Art in 2022. 

There was about a 10 year gap between her undergraduate and graduate studies, and it wasn’t until she joined her MFA program that Aaryn realized how important regular critiques are for artists. She truly missed the constructive dialogue that pushed her work forward. Critiques help artists learn how to talk about their work, how to ask new questions, and how to receive constructive feedback from others.