{"id":27158,"date":"2016-05-25T08:03:02","date_gmt":"2016-05-25T15:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/a-renaissance-for-public-art-in-haines\/"},"modified":"2016-05-25T08:03:02","modified_gmt":"2016-05-25T15:03:02","slug":"a-renaissance-for-public-art-in-haines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/life\/a-renaissance-for-public-art-in-haines\/","title":{"rendered":"A renaissance for public art in Haines"},"content":{"rendered":"

HAINES \u2014 <\/strong>Haines hasn\u2019t been known for its art scene, despite having more than 80 professional artists in a town of only 2,500. But the Alaska Arts Confluence has campaigned to change that perception, Carol Tuynman told me as we toured the town\u2019s public artworks on May 14.<\/p>\n

The Confluence\u2019s Art on Main Street campaign has filled previously empty windows with local art and the \u201cRusty and His Cart\u201d sculpture on the waterfront has become a favorite with tourists and locals alike. But it\u2019s not just the Confluence\u2019s work anymore: As we passed the Sheldon Jackson Museum, Tuynman pointed out two new stone sculptures that have sprung up in their yard. The whole town is getting in on the action.<\/p>\n

Tuynman took me to Historic Fort Seward, where the Confluence\u2019s sculpture garden is taking shape.<\/p>\n

Growing out of the abandoned ruins of the barracks building that burnt down in 1981, the sculpture garden will eventually see pieces by 16 local artists. During my visit, there were only four or so installed, but walking with Tuynman let me envision the site\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

\u201cJim Heaton, who is a carver, he came up with this idea of doing a Tlingit welcome figure and that\u2019s going to go right here,\u201d she said of one empty stretch of tumble-down wall at the site\u2019s entrance. \u201cWe\u2019ll prune back a little of the vegetation so people can see (it) from the port.\u201d<\/p>\n

But right now it\u2019s just a ruin, large chunks of wall fallen into the grasses below.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not going to reconstruct all the walls but we want to stabilize them,\u201d she said as we walked on. \u201cYou can see where it\u2019s kind of white there? We\u2019re starting to figure out how to repoint.\u201d<\/p>\n

In April, the National Park Service led a workshop for the public here to teach repointing, a process of renewing the mortar in old stone buildings.<\/p>\n

Inside the ruins, the sun shining off the exposed concrete floor, Tuynman showed me \u201cThe Tank with the Crank.\u201d Sea creatures and marine scenes sculpted out of metal have been added to a rusted water tank. When the crank is turned, the top of the sculpture rotates.<\/p>\n

It was made by David Pahl, who found the tank in the ruins and used his forging skills as former executive director of Haines\u2019 Hammer Museum to craft an interactive sculpture.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the artists have all done is used their experience and found ways to interpret either the materials or life at the fort in some way,\u201d Tuynman said.<\/p>\n

Nearby is one of Katie Craney\u2019s two pieces of permanent wallpaper. An artist working in found metal, she stenciled historic wallpaper designs from the officers\u2019 quarters onto the ruins\u2019 coal chute doors.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of ironic because probably the lowest ranking guys were shoveling the coal, but they get the (officers\u2019) wallpaper in history,\u201d Tuynman said.<\/p>\n

Well, Craney is hoping the wallpaper is permanent. \u201cThis is kind of an experiment to her. She hadn\u2019t exactly done something like this that was going to be outdoors,\u201d said Tuynman. \u201cBut it\u2019s been up since last fall, so it seems to be holding up.\u201d<\/p>\n

We continued walking over the the uneven and cracked concrete. \u201cThis whole area was full of debris. We cleaned out over 20 dump truck loads,\u201d she said. She told me about ideas for a boardwalk and making it a botanical garden as well as a sculpture one.<\/p>\n

Suddenly a pit opened up in front of us. It will become either a fountain or a pond, Tuynman explained, but nothing definitive has been planned though the earth has already been dug up.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo maybe an artist will get inspired and will come up with a commission for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also unplanned is what to do with the courtyard space between the two wings of the U-shaped barracks. \u201cIt could be a really great farmer\u2019s market,\u201d Tuynman suggested.<\/p>\n

Along the ruins\u2019 most complete wall is a line of rusted metal objects. It\u2019s the beginning of Andrea Nelson\u2019s \u201cStratigraphy,\u201d an archeological profile of the building using all found objects. Some of its most unexpected and ornate elements are old radiator pieces, their floral design still visible through the wear-and-tear of the years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s amazing,\u201d Tuynman said of them. \u201cShe\u2019s been collecting radiators for years.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the other side of the wall will be a piece by Kerry Cohen, a ceramicist who for several years now has been working on getting pottery glazes to look like glacial ice.<\/p>\n

Cohen was the one who came up with the idea for the sculpture garden, back when the Alaska Arts Confluence was first contemplating using an ArtPlace America grant to do interpretive panels around the fort.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe artists all met down at the docks and we decided we would walk the tour route and then we got up here to this ruins and one of the artists, Kerry Cohen said, \u2018We should do a sculpture garden.\u2019 And in five minutes the project changed from just doing interpretive panels with art on them to artists doing art installations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tuynman overlooked this part of the ruins, overgrown with vegetation, a light breeze stirring the trees. \u201cI think this will be pretty wonderful,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s pretty much, except for the commissions, it\u2019s all being done by volunteers.\u201d<\/p>\n

She reckons 85 volunteers have come and helped out with the sculpture garden. \u201cOne thing that\u2019s been wonderful about this whole project is it\u2019s really opened up our community to creativity. I hear that more and more in conversations talking about creativity and talking about beauty.\u201d<\/p>\n

For example, she told me major renovations have been brought up by the Haines Borough and harbor community for the harbor, including adding a forty-foot steel wall and expanding the boat parking lot into where Lookout Park is today.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of concern about the aesthetics\u201d of the project where they may have not been in the past, Tuynman said. \u201cThey actually formed an aesthetics committee.\u201d<\/p>\n

But more conversation doesn\u2019t necessarily mean more art. She has given presentations to the Borough about a giant formline bracelet that would form an arch nine feet high, 12 feet across and five feet wide. She had proposed putting it at Picture Point but ran into opposition from the community.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s new controversy about it,\u201d she said. \u201cI actually like the conversation, but we may not end up doing a sculpture there.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2022 The other commissioned sculpture garden artists are Sarah Bishop, Donna Catotti, Rob Goldberg, Tresham Gregg, John Hagen, Debi Knight Kennedy, Gene Kennedy, Jeffrey Moskowitz, Adrian Revenaugh, and John and Sharon Svenson.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2022 Contact Capital City Weekly staff writer and design wizard Randi Spray at randi.spray@capweek.com.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HAINES \u2014 Haines hasn\u2019t been known for its art scene, despite having more than 80 professional artists in a town of only 2,500. But the Alaska Arts Confluence has campaigned to change that perception, Carol Tuynman told me as we toured the town\u2019s public artworks on May 14. The Confluence\u2019s Art on Main Street campaign […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":27159,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-27158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27158"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=27158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}