KENAI — For nearly seven years, 2 Sister’s Alaska Seafood operated out of a tiny grey building on Bridge Access in Kenai.

The business, which is driven primarily by internet sales of local and Alaska seafood, finally outgrew its old home and has found a new one in a former liquor and convenience store on Kenai Spur Highway.

“We had no heat, no running water, no insulation, no bathroom,” said co-owner Roylene Stout, with a laugh. When she and founder Annette King needed to use the bathroom “The gas station was just down the road,” she said.

KENAI — On a recent snowy Wednesday, Marion Nelson stood inside her warm backyard studio pulling on a pair of blue gloves, occasionally reaching over to lift a heated paintbrush and test the elasticity of a pot of colored pigment.

A wall of smell, beeswax and resin, invades every inch of the brightly colored 20-by-20-foot encaustics studio where Nelson paints, scrapes, shapes and colors her heat-malleable creations into pieces like the ones currently on display in the Gary L. Freeburg Gallery at the Kenai Peninsula College’s Kenai River Campus.

KENAI — The thick brush strokes, vivid blues and greens, stand up on the canvas, turning its surface into a tactile landscape just as interesting to the fingertips as it is to the eyes.

At least, that’s what administrators at Sterling Elementary School in the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District say of a new art project that has been sitting in the lobby of the school with no barrier between the painting and the curious fingers of students.

KENAI — Watching pregnant women walk into the ABC Pregnancy Care Center looking for help is a surreal experience for Hazel Streiff — one that prompts her memories of being young, terrified and pregnant.

Sixteen years ago, Streiff walked into the center, recently divorced, feeling alone and needing information about how to care for herself and her unborn son, Dakota.

Now, she’s learning to help others who find themselves in a tough spot, striving to provide the same warm and non-judgmental environment she said she found when she needed support.