(Photo by Olivia Schmidt/KFSK)
The Clausen Memorial Museum is currently hosting the Annabelle Baker memorial art show. This year, the theme is “Layered Landscapes,” and it showcases a variety of mediums, from painting and photography to weavings and poetry. The gallery will be on display September 6-14, and a reception was held on opening night.
Walking into the museum, guests are greeted by a large painting of the Muskeg, bisected by a wooden boardwalk. The vegetation in the foreground is a bright green, while the distant mountains are painted in shades of blue and gray.
“And the sky was just starting to break from the gray to a little bit of blue coming in,” Beth Flor, the artist, said. “It was just like a perfect kind of summer day walk. I want it to feel like you can just go on the boardwalk and up the trail.”
Just like viewers are led into the painting, Flor’s piece leads visitors into the art show. It’s put on every year by the Rainforest Festival. The exhibit honors one of their founding members, Ann Baker, who was known around Petersburg as Annabelle. Baker was a community activist, athlete, and an avid artist. She passed away in 2012 from breast cancer. After her death, the Rainforest art show she loved was dedicated to her memory.
This year, the gallery hosts a total of 93 works by various local artists. The installation currently seems to inhabit every nook and cranny of the museum – but in the days leading up to the event, organizers were worried they wouldn’t have enough pieces to put on the show.
“As of Monday, there were only three, and it was a little tense there,” Chris Weiss, Rainforest Festival committee member said. “But we know Petersburg always comes through. We have photographs, we have weavings, we have poetry, we have watercolor, we have acrylic. You name it, we have it, and the variety also kind of lends itself to the layers of art that are available.”
Marilyn Menish-Meucci, another committee member, was also struck by the variety of art on display.
“There’s a lot of different things I like here,” Menish-Meucci said. “Some of it is more modern, not a definitive style or shape, it just depends. Color catches my eye – I’m intrigued by what the high school kids did, what Ashley’s kids did.”
Menish-Meucci is referring to the works of the adolescent artists in the museum. All are in some way the creations of “Ashley’s Kids”. Ashley Lohr is a local art teacher, and she contributed 40 pieces that her students made in the previous week.
“As art students, I always tell them that we’re going to need to learn how to be a well rounded artist,” Lohr said. “So not just being a creative person and completing projects, but talking about their work. I think that when they come to the show and they get to see it, they’ll be proud of themselves, but also encouraged to be open for more opportunities in the future to participate.”
In addition, the youngest artists to have work on display are Lohr’s actual kids, Rose and Finn.
“I painted a piece of artwork,” Rose Lohr said. “ Looking outside I’m like, ‘Oh, I think I should, since it’s forest themed, I should paint a forest.’”
“I painted me fishing,” her younger brother, Finn Lohr, said. He points to his work, a painting of a small child holding various strips of color. “I like this part when I get all these fish.”
On the opposite end of the room from Rose’s forest and Finn’s fish is a field of forget-me-nots. Over 25 watercolor paintings of the flower were donated to the show by the high school art class. Iris Case is one of the students.
“In class, we picked our state flower, and everyone did a mix of ink and watercolor,” Case said.
“I really like watercolor a lot, cause I feel like a lot of the watercolor colors describe Alaska, it really depicts what Alaska looks like.
Iris’s mother, Carey Carmichael Case, also has work in the exhibit. She’s a photographer, and brought two photos that show off the textured landscape of Southeast. One is of a glacier breaking into the sea, and the other-
“That is one that I took at sunset, coming in on a helicopter ride, actually,” Case said. “And it’s showing the top of Petersburg Mountain, Bear Claw, Duncan Pass, and the farthest ridges you can see are Kuiu Island. What I really love about this show is that we’re all looking at technically the same landscapes, but are being inspired in different mediums and in different ways.”
On a display across from Case’s photo, that principle is exemplified by the watercolor paintings of Mitkof’s mountains by Lohr’s middle School’s art class.
“This is a way to kind of jump right in and give them that taste of what a well rounded artist does,” Lohr said. “There’s that atmospheric perspective happening where there’s the mountain range. We talked about how to use watercolor in layers and to bring out the vibrance of that color by layering it over and over. And layering is the theme with the art show.”
Lohr was astonished by the level of community participation in the show.
“It’s always exciting to see the well roundedness of medium that happens in town – the acceptance of all levels and encouragement of becoming or being. I’m very excited to see new names or new mediums coming out.”
One of those new faces in the art scene of Petersburg is Malena Marvin. She submitted two watercolor paintings to the collection.
“Well, this is my first time ever participating in an art show,” Marvin said, laughing. “It’s been my goal to be in an art show and become a Petersburg artist. I tend to have a burn rate of like three pieces that I throw away to one piece that I keep, because I’m not a professional. I’m just trying to express how I feel about what I see. When I look at the mountains and the ocean surrounding our town, I feel a real sense of peace.”
Marvin credits local resident Pia Reiley with teaching her the watercolor process. Reiley herself was heavily involved in the arrangement of the exhibit, and submitted two pieces to the show as well – although her chosen medium for this event was oil paint.
“I kind of like a little bit more abstract art for myself when I paint, but the paintings in here are kind of semi-abstract,” Reiley said. “I was outside this summer and painted them. One is the view from my house, and the other is the northern lights.”
Fellow rainforest festival committee member Sunny Rice also took the show’s prompt in a more conceptual direction, by composing a poem reflecting on a morning hike.
“I was walking through the muskeg, and it’s usually this time of year where the dew sits on every single spider web, and there are so many spiderwebs that you don’t even know are there until the dew does this,” Rice said.
Rice reflected that the wide range of projects on display at the museum is exactly what Baker would have wanted for the show.
“She was so community oriented and she was so supportive of the arts community,” Rice said. “I hope people think about how we all live together in this tiny town, even though this is the time of year where we’re being pulled apart from each other and remember how we all actually work together and thrive in one place.”
The Annabelle Baker Memorial Art Show demonstrates the diverse perspectives and creativity of Petersburg’s artists, young and old. Whether it’s a student’s watercolor or a seasoned artist’s photograph, the show invites visitors to explore layered landscapes in both art and life.
