His and her artists spaces

artists' spaces

By Courtney Nelson | FOR THE JUNEAU EMPIRE

The Bentwood and Bead gallery, in the big yellow building on Third Street between Starr Hill and the Historic downtown district, is a dream artists’ space that’s been a long time coming.
Jim and Salty Hanes created this his-and-her artist’s paradise, where they have space to create art as well as a gallery to show and sell it in, and no commute to get there — they live upstairs.
When their gallery is open, they don’t carry mass-produced tourist gifts, but rather offer one-of-a-kind items for locals and tourists, featuring their own work as well as that of other artists.
The space
Visitors enter the Bentwood and Bead gallery on the ground floor gallery space, which features Jim’s engravings, Salty’s beadwork and two different guest artists every year. They like to carry diverse artists and mediums such as painters and potters to balance their engraving and beadwork. But after decades of running public shops, the most important criteria in considering guest artists is “ease of doing business with,” said Jim.
Also on the ground floor are two studios. One is Jim’s, with violins and engravings, and the other is Salty’s, with bead-working materials.
Over the last 28 years, Jim and Salty have had many different business arrangements and many different careers.
Salty had Taku Tailor in the Emporium Mall downtown and also Spirit Beads on Fifth Street, while Jim had his String Shop in a couple locations.
After being too big, too small, or too spread out, they now say they’ve got it right. The couple can work on projects separately but meet in the gallery to collaborate.
This ability to share ideas has led to inspired pieces. For example, Jim exhausted an engraving he was never quite happy with and he showed it to Salty, who beaded the image into an octopus purse.
Mr. Valentine
During the Gold Rush days, Emery Valentine, Juneau’s sixth mayor, owned the building where Bentwood and Bead is located.
Valentine became a little cash poor in 1901, so the then 43-year-old jeweler gave the building to his business manager as payment for a year’s work. Valentine went on to build the Valentine Building and the Seward Building in 1913, which border the downtown historic district.
In 1997, Salty and Jim were simplifying and consolidating their lives so they formed a plan and bought the house. It was run-down, so they stripped it to the studs for a custom renovation, completed in 1999.
Now they arrange their gallery schedule around their travel plans, doing what they love.
Jim
Jim, originally from Seattle, graduated with a degree in marine biology from Western Washington University and worked at the Navy’s arctic research lab in Barrow on contract. When he found he couldn’t move further up without getting another degree, he looked around or a career change. He liked working with wood and wanted to learn how to fiddle so he put them together.
“I found out violins were all carved and not bent into the shape they are in. That just seemed fascinating to me so I sent letters off all around the country to see if I could get an apprenticeship, and I got one, on the East Coast.”
The apprenticeship, based in Washington, D.C., spanned two years. When he wasn’t making and repairing violins, Jim worked for the Smithsonian identifying arctic artifacts, and sometimes commuted back up north for periods to work. He returned to Juneau and opened a string shop in 1983, the same year he met his partner, Salty.
Things didn’t go exactly as planned. Instead of making violins as he had intended, he ended up providing instrument rentals and repairs for 18 years. So he closed his string shop in 2005, and started making violins again. Now he only repairs instruments in January and February.
After Jim closed his string shop, he had time to try new things so he took a few classes at UAS with Alice Tersteeg, a renowned printmaker. Engraving and printmaking have now become a passion.
“(Tersteeg) has taught so many famous Southeast Alaska artists over the years in printmaking. She’s an unsung hero as far as her contribution to artists,” Jim said.
Jim was also inspired by woodblock print artist and engraver Dale DeArmond, who passed away in 2006. Jim uses her old press for his art. He creates his images on finely polished blocks of wood using little chisel tools. Each piece is very labor intensive; a polished block of wood can take 50 to 60 hours alone to make because it has to be perfectly smooth.
He also does relief and reduction prints, wood boxes with carved lids and wood sculptures.
Salty
Salty, named after an adored aunt, was born on the East Coast. She grew up in a large family in which everyone worked with their hands. She started beading at an early age, went to school in Colorado focusing on sculpture and moved to Juneau in 1976.
She’s worked in Juneau as a carpenter, house painter and ski-patroller, among other things, and was very handy repairing outdoors equipment, which prompted the opening of her business, Taku Tailors.
After meeting Jim in 1983, she started her beading store, Spirit Beads. Like Jim, she got so caught up in running a business, teaching and doing workshops, she was unable to work on her own things.
Salty said her interest in beads stems partly from her belief that they tie us together; she uses and carries many vintage and antique beads, and is interested in their history through the bead trade routes that passed through Alaska.
Salty has kept her finger on the pulse of the beading community in Juneau over the years, holding beading circles at Spirit Beads, working with youth and teaching in schools in Alaska, the Yukon and British Columbia. She has also had exhibits of her beadwork at the Juneau Douglas City Museum.
Future plans
Jim and Salty have found a balance of work and play that works for them. Their philosophy is to try to live simply and not plan too far ahead.
“You don’t know what the future holds so stop dinking around with 10-year plans and just take it day by day,” Jim said.
“It’s a really great life and we are grateful,” Salty said.
Bentwood and Bead is open in the winter by appointment, and will resume its regular hours in the spring.

Former Juneau jeweler returns for show

 

By Courtney Nelson | FOR THE JUNEAU EMPIRE

Jewelry artist and former Juneau resident Leah Sturgis lives in Alexandria, Va., but her ties to Alaska are still strong. She’ll be back in town this week to show her latest jewelry designs at Annie Kaills as their featured First Friday artist.
Sturgis, a jewelry artist, lived in Juneau for more than 10 years before moving east in 2003 to accompany her husband, musician Frank Solivan. Solivan had managed to do the almost unthinkable: earn a stable income with benefits for his family as a bluegrass musician. He did it by taking a position with the U.S. Navy’s official bluegrass and country band, Country Current, an honor for a musician and one which took the couple to Washington, D.C.
“He got the job and we moved to D.C., next thing you know I was a Navy wife,” she said.
While in Juneau, Sturgis had begun designing and selling her own line of jewelry through Rock, Paper, Scissors, a store she co-owned in Juneau with partners Lindsay Campbell and Amy Fletcher. At that time her jewelry business, though very popular, was more of a hobby than a profession. Once in D.C., however, Sturgis had more time to devote to perfecting and expanding her designs. She learned about wholesale jewelry and her business expanded from availability in five stores to 100 stores from Chicken, Alaska to New York City.
“I think what’s unusual about my jewelry is the design,” she said. “I don’t use unusual materials, I don’t use unusual techniques — I have an architectural, Asian aesthetic. And I love natural materials.”
Porcupine quills and caribou antlers are among the elements she uses, pieces that have long been popular, but that she includes in unsual ways.
“I want to combine it in a way that looks really fresh, clean and contemporary.”
Creative journey
Sturgis credits most of her creativity to the Waldorf School she attended her first three years of formal education. She said they taught her to clean and spin wool, make her own bread and soup, and explore other languages.
“I think it shaped my creativity really early,” she said. “I learned you can make anything from anything.”
She took her first basic jewelry-making class while working in a new age bookstore as a teen in Chicago, and that was virtually all the training she needed.
“I learned the basics and didn’t feel the need to master it,” she said. “I just ran with that because my techniques are pretty basic.”
Part of her design influence was Native American jewelry; as a kid she attended powwows in North Dakota with her family, and that is where she first saw animal quills used.
“My best selling piece of jewelry is the abacus with a Juneau porcupine quill in it. I get the quills from my mom.”
Sturgis’ mom, Mary, still lives in town.
Ties to Juneau
Sturgis moved to Juneau soon after high school because she had a beloved aunt, Grace Elliott, also known as the “Blues Goddess” on KTOO, who lived here.
When Elliott left Chicago for Juneau, she blazed the trail not only for Sturgis, but for six of her siblings to make the move eventually.
As an eight-year-old Sturgis said she was particularly crushed when her aunt moved.
“She lived with us when she was 18 and she was like another parent to me — she was like my fairy godmother — and she went to visit her friend in Juneau and was so captivated she never came back. It pretty much broke my heart.”
Sturgis was 10 when her mother Mary brought her to Juneau to visit Elliott. During her trip she experienced the Alaska Folk Festival and fell in love with Alaska.
“I was 19 and following my spirit of adventure, but I was also following my aunties who were replanting themselves in Juneau from Chicago.”
Many years later, she met her husband Frank at the Folk Festival when he was visiting from Anchorage. He eventually moved to Juneau to join her, but soon after the couple began discussing other options.
“Juneau is a really difficult place to be a professional musician,” Sturgis said, adding that this spurred his move into the Navy.
She said it was really hard to leave her Juneau friends and still maintains strong connections in Alaska. Despite her distance, she’s been showing her jewelry at the Eastern Market and says she always has someone from Alaska stop by.
“Every single weekend I see somebody from Alaska at the market.”
Generous philosophy
After six years of creativity and hard work, income from Sturgis’s jewelry sales now support the couple. Solivan recently left the Navy to pursue his career as a musician.
“For the last two years he has been with his own band, the Dirty Kitchen Band. They just got hired by the Anchorage Folk Festival,” Sturgis said. She’d like to show her jewelry at all his stops.
“We have been kind of been trying to combine our two creative worlds — which is hard — but easier in Alaska,” said Sturgis.
Sturgis credits her success with the generosity of successful people in her craft who were willing to openly share their experience.
“I feel like generosity of spirit is key,” she said.
For more on Sturgis, visit www.leahsturgis.com. For more on Solivan, visit www.dirtykitchenband.com.

Lucid Reverie: An artists' space mixing business with pleasure

By Courtney Nelson | FOR THE JUNEAU EMPIRE

Patrick Race and Aaron Suring founded Lucid Reverie LLC in 2002 in Race’s grandmother’s basement. Originally established to create websites and commercials for Juneau companies, the business has grown into a force in Juneau’s film community, and was one of the major players in the creation of the Juneau Underground Motion Picture Society (JUMP). The winter JUMP film festival begins tonight at 7 p.m. at the Gold Town Nickelodeon.
Soon after starting up their business, Race and Suring moved from grandma’s basement into a space downtown in the Emporium Mall. They’ve been there for more than nine years.
Part of history
The Emporium Mall, which stretches from Franklin Street to Shattuck Way, was built in 1901 on pilings, because at the time it was waterfront. Suring said sometimes at high tide he sees water under his desk beneath the floorboards.
The building was originally the old Alaska Steam and Laundry, one of the oldest and longest-running Alaska businesses, built by Ernest Jaeger. Jaeger added to his wealth with gold from miner’s pockets that stuck in his drain traps.
“Where we’re located was a wood shed to store fuel for the boiler,” said Race.
The space has hosted many other businesses in addition to the laundry. It was a blacksmith for knife-making and horse-shoeing, a tattoo parlor, a café, an outdoor gear swap meet and is rumored to have been a donut shop.
Lucid Reverie, meaning “clear daydream,” is located on the first floor of the historic building, and is divided into three rooms.
The Ruby Room, their storefront, was the latest addition to their space when they punched a hole through from their offices. It has rich colors and a playful feel with comic books, cards, humorous T-shirts, and their latest passion — graphic novels.
Race and Suring have desks in the adjoining room, as does Lou Logan, who joined the company a few years after it started. Suring thinks the lack of walls and vaulted ceilings create an open feeling good for project collaborations.
The third and innermost room is used for gear and general storage.
While the three don’t see themselves in this space forever — they would ultimately like a window with a view — they are grateful for it, said Race.
“It’s comfortable, it’s working and I’m glad to have it.”
Finding balance
After four years of offering commercial services such as website design and video production, Race and Suring realized they weren’t having any fun. Ironically, Race made a short film in college titled Lucid Reverie about an Orwellian cubicle drone escaping her dreary life.
In 2006, they decided to reject commercial work and focus on comics and short films. They had fun but eventually found personal projects alone couldn’t support them.
“After about a year of this we were almost out of money, so we decided to start taking commercial work again,” said Race with a chuckle. “The business has always been really good to us, depending on how much we want to work.”
With the creation of their film company, Alaska Robotics, which falls under the Lucid Reverie umbrella, they attempt to balance commercial and creative endeavors — and it seems to be working.
“We’ve been doing this for nine years now, so at this point I guess you can call us successful. It’s not a fluke that we are still here. And it’s not like I have income from somewhere else, so it must be supporting us,” said Race, who admits that he doesn’t need much.
“I never raised my standard of living after I got out of college so that helps.”
Finding each other
Race and Suring met while in school at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. They met through the honors program and were both computer science majors, filmmakers and soccer players; they’d lived in Juneau before but never crossed paths.
Suring and Race also met Logan at UAF. Logan was majoring in natural resource management at the time but found science wasn’t his passion, and decided to join Lucid Reverie.
“Aaron and I met Lou when we were doing film festivals in Fairbanks, and he was submitting films to them and doing really cool work, and he took over the film club once his thing ended,” said Race adding that he was a welcome addition to their company.
“He’s really technically proficient. He’s kind of a genius when it comes to details, and he has a really good eye for detail and obsesses over it. He holds a strict standard but it’s really helpful when we are working on big projects.”
Logan is also a founding member of the UAF Film Club and the JUMP Society.
Sarah Asper-Smith is also a part of the creative team, but is currently away at school for museum exhibit design. She recently published a vibrant kids book “Have You Ever Seen a Smack of Jellyish?” through Sasquatch Books.
Inspiration
When it comes to tapping into creativity, Race says he has more ideas than he will ever be able to produce.
“I’m working on a script adaptation, a script for a graphic novel, several short films, several comics, then I have a list of other stuff I want to do. I’ll never do it all but it keeps me busy.”
Suring agreed, saying “Pat’s a wonderfully creative guy with lots of ideas that just keep coming.”
The jobs haven’t all been fun and light-hearted; the team has taken on some challenging projects dealing with heavier topics.
“We have recently finished the Taylor White film for the Taylor White Foundation, and we are working on a film for the University about Native students from rural areas attending UAS and some of the challenges they face,” said Race.
Suring says his favorite challenge was the Science on a Sphere project they created for the Alaska State Museum.
“There were a lot of technical things that were completely different,” he said.
The trio also love to bring up artists from the comic community to Juneau. Race, who created comics for JDHS’s school paper when he was a student, says the community is really tight.
“There’s this group of people doing things together and talking about story and art, and it’s more of a community than I’ve ever run into than anything else. Everyone keeps in touch, comments on each others work, and it’s nice to see that and be on the edge of a community like that.”
After the success of bringing up a well-known comic artist from Japan, Race is working with the library to bring up professional storyboard artists Chris Appelhans and John Clauson this spring.
“These guys are incredibly talented,” said Race.
Suring, Race and Logan don’t have plans to slow down any time soon. As for his inspiration, Race says it’s everywhere.
“It’s an appropriation of culture, you just live your life, see what’s around you and then try to tell your story.”
If that doesn’t work, maybe they can find gold under the floorboards.
• Courtney Nelson can be reached at nelsonfamily@acsalaska.net

Open doors and big windows

By Courtney Nelson | FOR THE JUNEAU EMPIRE

The Canvas Community Art Studio and Gallery is an inspired artists’ space. Located downtown on the corner of Seward and Second streets, the thriving three-room artists’ studio brings together REACH artists who experience disabilities and other local artists in a new model for successful social integration and inclusion.
In 2005, Canvas Director Annie Geselle was asked to expand REACH’s small, one-windowed, day-habilitation space. While researching successful facilities in California and New York, Geselle learned that local artists were trying to create a downtown community artist space, and suggested combining forces.
With the help of an advisory board, NorthWind architects and the efforts of many community members and organizations, her vision was carried out.
“REACH has always been dedicated to connecting people who experience disabilities with the community,” said MK MacNaughton, Canvas program developer. REACH, a local nonprofit that provides a range of services to those who experience disabilities, is the third largest employer in the city, after the state and the city.
“There are hundreds of direct service providers who work one-on-one with REACH clients who go out with people in the community. You see them at the pool, at concerts, but this was a different model.”
The Canvas has created daily interactions between Juneau community artists and REACH artists, enhancing their communication, independence and socialization.
“People of all abilities and all ages can create, so it was great thinking on Annie Geselle’s part to come up with it,” MacNaughton said.
Paving the way
The Canvas is one of the first integrated art studios in the country, according to Richard Fagundes, executive director of REACH. MacNaughton said the facility has been a long time coming, and is a testament to the efforts of those in the disabilities awareness movement who have worked to shift the culture from isolation to integration.
“I want to recognize all of the work people in the disabilities awareness movement have invested over the past 50 years. Because of all the work people have done before me, I have the luxury of helping to create this beautiful program,” she said.
“There are adults in this program who grew up in institutions very separate from other people – isolated. That doesn’t happen very much anymore, and it certainly doesn’t happen in Juneau like it did years ago.”
Let there be light
The welcoming space has large windows along the Seward Street side that allow natural light to pour into the studio and gallery, and encourage passers-by to observe the artists at work, but MacNaughton said initially they drew the shades.
“When we first opened, people were worried about the community staring in and we kept the shades closed more.”
That started to change when REACH artist Corrine Jackson was working on a project involving wheel chair painting, where she’d roll paint-covered wheels around on a canvas on the floor to create a design. People watched through the windows as Jackson made tracks with her chair, and she didn’t mind the attention.
“She loved performance art — she loved people watching, and other people who weren’t in wheel chairs wanted to get in her wheelchair,” MacNaughton said.
The artistic process also helped Jackson get used to the chair itself.
“It had been very painful for her to move into a wheel chair and she didn’t like it very much, but through the process of using it as a paintbrush she became really proud of her tool.”
Once finished, Jackson’s art piece hung in the stairwell of the Capitol for a year.
“We never care about closing the shades anymore.”
Art explosion
In addition to becoming more visible to the public, the Canvas has contributed to an art explosion in the community through its extensive schedule of classes that are open to everyone. The facility offers up to three classes a night in the three different rooms, and helps support more than 100 different local artists by hiring them to teach and by hosting gallery nights so artists can sell their work.
Day habilitation and community classes include jewelry making, ceramics, painting, drawing, weaving, mixed media, film-making, culinary art and marimba playing, and REACH artists also have the opportunity to study acting in collaboration with Shona Strauser of Perseverance Theatre.
“There’s a lot of different arts happening, it’s not all just painting and glass,” said Tasha Walen, REACH art teacher. “There’s music and movement and yoga and theater and weaving, we cover pretty much everything.”
Music and movement
The current exhibit at the Canvas is “Music and Movement,” a joint show by REACH artists in the day habilitation program. On a recent afternoon at the studio, REACH artist Amanda Savikko furiously shined up a mosaic she’d been working on for more than a year, using tile shards from the pottery studio.
“It has stars and a couple of word stars and a bear,” said Savikko, who was inspired to create the image after studying a black and white picture of a saxophone.
Another artist, Melanie Adams, was finishing her Rock Banjo mosaic.
“Every day I create art in this space, painting, drawing, pastels, beads, pillows —everything. I love music and I have some of it for sale too,” she kidded. She says she puts half her money in the bank and half in her wallet.
Niall Johnson was making a pillow for his father for Christmas. He also plays the guitar, banjo and electric guitar, and is a mask maker.
“I do my own face in a mask, and Flash Gordon,” he said.
In addition to MacNaughton and Geselle, the Canvas has a handful of studio assistants on staff and often invites local artists to lead day habilitation classes.
Chelsea O’Neill, a Jesuit volunteer from Chicago, said she loves her job as an assistant.
“It’s great, I brag all the time that I have the best job,” she said. “(The REACH artists) are all very excited for the show to show their art to their friends and family and they’ve worked really hard. It’s really inspiring — they are so creative and they don’t hold back. It’s empowering to watch.”
REACH artist Avery Skaggs had a solo show this past fall, and Ed Parish will have one in February.
“Our culture has changed but The Canvas goes even a step farther by getting to truly celebrate talents and expressions, and I think people come in here and see work that is really beautiful,” MacNaughton said.
• Courtney Nelson can be reached at nelsonfamily@acsalaska.net.

Holiday Greetings

Bells Jingle Christmas

Shop Shutterfly.com for elegant Christmas photo cards.

View the entire collection of cards.

A world made of paper

By Courtney Nelson | For the Juneau Empire

Sherri McDonald says she's an artist with a paper problem.
"I have an addiction to paper - I make books or do art so I can buy more paper."
Luckily, McDonald's paper landscapes and her company, Paper Mountain Studio, have been well-received, allowing her to keep the addiction alive. Her intricate landscapes are made using scraps of colored and textured paper that are bound by non-toxic adhesive. Two of her pieces, "Blueberry Hill" and "Douglas Harbor," were selected for the All Alaska Juried Art Show in 2008. She has a show at Annie Kaill's opening Dec. 3, for Gallery Walk, and is working toward a solo show opening March 4 at the Juneau Arts & Culture Center.
When she isn't preparing for a show, McDonald is known as "Wild Bird" on Juneau's Roller Derby team.
Drawn to paper
McDonald received her undergraduate degree in art at the University of Minnesota, with a focus on printing and papermaking. After graduating, she apprenticed for three months with Japanese-style bookbinder Karen Saro in Washington state, whom she met at a Saturday market in Oregon.
"I fell in love with bookbinding during the apprenticeship and the craft - it just connected," said McDonald. "It's the physical act of tearing the paper and laying it down that connects to me, I guess I'm more of a physical artist."
She began creating landscape collages for her book covers, but soon became hooked on bigger works.
"That's when I started to challenge myself and do more complicated collages."
McDonald said the art form combines aspects of two- and three-dimensional work.
"Paper is like sculpture and drawing at the same time," she said. "It's two-dimensional but at the same time there's a three-dimensional quality to it because you are cutting and shaping it. It's very forgiving - you can layer it."
Creating space
After apprenticing with Saro, McDonald moved to Austin, Texas to work in a hand bindery. She met her husband, Mick, in Austin, and he got a job in Juneau two days after their wedding. While shopping for houses, McDonald and her husband agreed they had to find a home with a studio and a garage.
"We weren't going to stop until we found a place that would offer both," she said.
They found a place with a large basement crawl space on Douglas Island that fit the bill, but it took another two years before renovations began and about eight more months before they were complete.
"It was just a basement when we moved in. It was very dungeon-esque with dirt floors, visqueen, plywood and a single light bulb."
The project accelerated when her father, who came out to help during the birth of their second child, ended up doing electrical work and installing sheetrock. They used gravel to raise the floor, put in floor heat and concrete and had stairs put in.
Now the studio has a large window overlooking Gastineau Channel providing natural light.
"It's great as a landscape artist to be able to look out at a gorgeous landscape that's constantly changing."
McDonald says she uses her art to deal with the dark winters and wet weather.
"Part of the reason I do the art I do is to help me get through the winters, and a view helps me see the beauty during weather that normally makes me depressed. If you capture that weather in art, then it becomes something different, it isn't your enemy as much."
Having a separate studio also allows her to flourish in a home with two young children.
"I like to come down and work on things and then leave things and know that I will find things exactly as I left them. I don't have to clean stuff up every time I walk away."
The creative process
McDonald says her time in her studio is not always productive. She sometimes procrastinates by pacing, checking e-mail, and figuring out music to play while she waits for inspiration to strike.
"In the beginning of a project you are filled with uncertainty, you don't know exactly what you want to do, whether it is going to be a good choice and worth spending any effort on or not. At a certain point you just have to say, 'Okay, go for it.'"
Once she has an idea, she starts to give it form before it eventually takes off.
"When it starts to come together - after making critical early moment decisions which are the hardest - if you make good choices, then it starts to take on its own life. Everything seems more clear, where you are going to go next ... it's just a flow from the brain to the paper or to the art."
The challenges
Although McDonald's art is primarily done in her studio, where she has a 16-drawer flat file filled with all types of paper, she has gone out with Juneau's Plein Rein artist group - with mixed results.
"Any bit of wind blows the paper away, if it's raining it gets wet. But there's a certain aesthetic to an immediate application of when you are looking at something and doing it right away that you can't really get in studios."
For those who are stuck or just starting out on their creative journey, McDonald suggests seeking out an encouraging person. For her, it was Rie and Juan Munoz, who bought McDonald's first prints to resell in their gallery. Their belief in her helped her accept that she was an artist, a major epiphany for her.
McDonald has learned that when she creates art that speaks to her and isn't created with a profit in mind it turns out better.
"For me it's really rewarding to create something that's not expected with paper, constantly trying to make it look like something beyond just a piece of paper - more of a painting. That's the challenge for me."
To read more about Sherri McDonald visit www.papermountainstudios.com.
Courtney Nelson can be reached at nelsonfamily@acsalaska.net

Tersteeg exercises her creative muscles in new show

By Courtney Nelson | For the Juneau Empire

Alice Tersteeg has been exercising her creative muscles lately. Last month, the local artist and former University of Alaska Southeast professor of art was featured in exhibits at both the Canvas and Annie Kaill's, in two shows that highlighted her extensive influence on the arts community of Juneau. The Canvas show, which included Tersteeg's work, featured pieces by many of her former students in a variety of media, from silk screen prints to etchings. The Annie Kaill's show featured art from Tersteeg's personal collection, and was organized to raise money to help pay for large medical bills her husband incurred before he succumbed to lung cancer in July.
This month she headlines a second show at Annie Kaill's, this time featuring her own original work. The show opens Friday with a First Friday reception also celebrating the downtown gallery's 35th anniversary.
Born in northern California, Tersteeg earned a degree in art from the University of California Chico, then received her masters in fine arts from Syracuse University - in spite of her father's wishes.
"I was always interested in art and I knew it was all I wanted to do, but my father thought it wasn't a very practical career - that didn't deter me at all," said Tersteeg.
University days
Tersteeg paved the way for many more people to tap into their creative energy by creating new art degrees at UAS, including an associate of arts degree and certificate in Northwest Coast Art. It's the accomplishment she's most proud of.
"I was working to support the Northwest Coast Art program, which I started in 1983 with Dr. William Demmert," Tersteeg said. "Members of the community had come to the university to ask if the classes could be offered on a more regular basis because they were hit and miss, so we started the program."
With her help, UAS went on to offer bachelor's degrees in art, as well as degrees with an art emphasis, for a total of five art degrees.
"To me that was my biggest life goal, to provide that many opportunities for students."
The importance of art
"I think they are making a huge mistake when they start cutting art programs and music programs. These are areas of creativity that are absolutely essential for people to grow," Tersteeg said. "If you go through your life without creating artwork or always listening to other people's music instead of creating your own music, then you may be doing a disservice to yourself - there may be a lot more creativity inside you that never comes out."
While doing art is often perceived as relatively expensive, Tersteeg believes making different choices can lead to more creative endeavors.
"If you spend your money on expensive cars or expensive sound systems or talk on the phone a lot, what do you have to show for it when you are finished? If you are spending money on art supplies, you are doing yourself a lot of good for your own mental health as well as developing the creative muscle."
Early years
Tersteeg moved to Sitka in 1973 after doing graphic design in Chico. She worked for eight years at Sitka's community college before taking a job at UAS in Juneau in 1981, where she fell in love with the setting. She's lived here 35 years.
"It was the setting and the personality, and it's the size city and state where you think you can make a difference."
Tersteeg met her husband Roger, who'd moved to Juneau from Minnesota, on a blind date set up by one of her students, Joanie Dahl, who was a model for one of Tersteeg's drawing classes.
Although Tersteeg sticks primarily to landscapes and wildlife, she did a show last year titled "Chrome" which showcased her appreciation for Harley Davidson motorcycles the Pandhandlers biker club, which she says collects toys for kids and coordinates other charitable fundraisers.
Her husband Roger was a mechanic in town and he loved restored cars and liked to attend car shows like "Dip Sticks" in Juneau, which got her interested.
Lessons
Tersteeg recently suffered a huge loss - her husband died of cancer. Roger was a smoker and Tersteeg urges people to do whatever they can to help their loved ones stop smoking and to prepare for financial strain of potential illness.
"Discuss medical coverage early and often," Tersteeg said.
Her husband's Social Security did not cover the costs of emergency transportation because he was covered under Tersteeg's insurance at the time. When she retired, he was no longer fully covered.
She also advises people to look into emergency Medevac insurance with ground transportation, such as the one offered through Apollo MT for $100 a year. Airlift Northwest is another option for $79 a year that covers entire households but they don't offer coverage for ground transport. Without the insurance, the air and ground emergency transportation can cost over $50,000.
Tersteeg has been through some stressful experiences, but is doing better.
"I have a wonderful support system of friends and I would never move anywhere else because I have such wonderful friends here. There's no way to explain how important that is."
• Courtney Nelson can be reached at nelsonfamily@acsaalska.net.