"Yeah, the whining's kinda cute but..."

In all seriousness, homeless youths are a problem in this community, and what with the onset of the winter, a cause well worth considering:

"School district officials estimate more than 250 homeless students attend schools in the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District, a number that does not include recent flood victims from rural Alaska, preschoolers or children at private or alternative schools. Last year, the district estimates it worked with approximately 530 homeless students." (link)

Fairbanks Counseling and Adoption’s Street Outreach and Advocacy program just had another candlelight vigil to raise awareness of this issue, follow the linkage for more contact info on what you can do.

"In Sarah We Trust"

Just in case anyone thinks I've gotten over my case of Palin Derangement Syndrome: I though things were better and everything was going okay, and then she opened up her mouth again. This time at a Right-to-Life rally in Wisconsin where she veered off-topic in her winsome, folksy style of incoherent rambling (as opposed to mine). Maybe because she's been gloating over her new hoard of cash since quitting Alaska, but Sarah Palin seems to have become fixated on another new bizarre obsession: the conspiratorial shift of "In God We Trust" on our coinage to the edge:

"In addition to the suggestion that government officials would consider hastening the death of the infirm or handicapped, she began her remarks with a puzzling commentary on the design of newly minted dollar coins.

Noting that there had been a lot of “change” of late, Palin recalled a recent conversation with a friend about how the phrase “In God We Trust” had been moved to the edge of the new coins.

“Who calls a shot like that?” she demanded. “Who makes a decision like that?”

She added: “It’s a disturbing trend.”

Sacrilegeous graven images and idolatry issues aside, of all the problems facing our world today, this is what preoccupies her?
Camp Robbers also have a thing for bright, shiny objects, have about as much of an attention span, and probably a bit more intelligence. Not much though.

Awesome and bogus indeed.

"Bobbing for Apples in an Outhouse"

I've been installing insulation in a cabin the past couple days, and it's an awful lot like politics: gets under your skin and drives you crazy. That and makes you die a slow, horrible, cancerous death.
Sarah Palin's congressional political counterpart, Minnesota's Michele Bachmann, led a Republican patriot-tea-bagger protest against health care outside the US Capitol, and our own Congressman Don Young attended the rally.
Given Don Young's penchant for embracing right wing craziness one can only assume he tacitly approved of the rhetoric of thousands of people screaming "Kill" and carrying signs that read "Waterboard Congress" and Holocaust images from the Dachau crematoria comparing health care legislation with Nazi Germany.

In fact, an official press release from his office makes a statement equating the health care bill to "bobbing for apples in an outhouse."

Sometimes this stuff just writes itself.

Or, as succinctly phrased over on Mudflats; it's "Time for Republicans to Start Eating Their Young."

"Environmentalists are a socialist group of individuals that are the tool of the Democrat Party. I'm proud to say that they are my enemy. They are not Americans, never have been Americans, never will be Americans." - Congressman Don Young, AK

"We wonder why we have got the Freemen or the militants. We wonder why we have got unrest in this country. It is because our government, in fact, has got out of hand and out of line, with the Endangered Species Act." - Congressman Don Young, AK

Sasquatch Ptarmigan Safari

One of the reoccurring meta-lessons is that you can do art, you should do art everywhere, anywhere. Artists more than most folks tend to hole up in a creative comfort zone where it's safe to do their thing, and while this incubative studio instinct doesn't ever get old for me, it can and does get a little ingrown. It's the flip side of getting in the groove - ruts are familiar places to be, and they can stretch out forever. Years in my case.
Being immersed in different situations and exposed to new surroundings can often be the requisite jump-start into fresh and interesting work; just like getting ideas & inspiration one needs periodic realignments.

On that note, the class is shifting around to other locales, and in conjunction with the critter spot-illustration assignments and a renewed focus on observation and field-sketching plus experimentation with pen & ink techniques, we spent the first of two sessions at the UAF Museum of the North. For the first hour of class the exhibit areas are technically closed to the public, and so I usually reserve a classroom that is available so as to do a demonstration and have students warm up on the bag of assorted plush beavers I've somehow accumulated over the years...

Shown above is the quick & dirty demo using one of the specimens provided by the museum staff, a willow ptarmigan. This is the official Alaskan state bird, and is also without a doubt one of the absolutely stupidest creatures to survive in the wild. Symbolism aside, as a model it represents a common issue with many northern lifeforms, that of being mostly white. So many animals up here are white; ptarmigan, arctic fox, arctic hare, polar bear, snowy owl, bankers, lawyers, doctors. This presents a unique challenge when drawing with pen & ink, and it necessitates reminding them of the skills they already have picked up using other media, like rendering toilet paper with charcoal or copying the works of Fred Machetanz, for example.


Then for the remainder of the class it's off to explore the exhibition areas. Given that we only have an hour and a half left, there isn't a lot of time to waste, and the students have a suggested "hit list" of objects to harvest. Then they are tasked with working up at least two of their pencil roughs in their sketchbooks with ink: one experimenting with the dip pens + India ink and the other using instead their set of pigment markers (ex: Microns or Pitt Artist Pens). Not only does this homework get them comfortable with the tools needed to complete the upcoming assignment, it will inevitably have the side-benefit of calling into sharp focus just exactly what they will need to do better on the next trip, as learning to acquire observational skills while taking these "visual notes" is and will be more and more crucial training for the weeks ahead.

And yeah, I slightly exaggerated the relative size of the ptarmigan's claws after commenting on just how big they actually are during the demo. Just slightly off-panel is the steaming, bloody carcass of a poor moose which this bird has just slaughtered. Woe to the unwary outdoorsman who is lulled into complacency while out in the Alaskan wilderness. My running commentaries often lead to some pretty bizarre stories unfolding in tangent with close examination and studying of the subject matter. In other words, I tend to talk shit even while drawing it.

"Art at the college level is sheltered. It's about ideas, pushing the boundaries and it is fun. Making a living making art requires a whole new set of values and strategies." - Judith D'Agostino

Rachelle Dowdy: "From Here to There and There to Here"

This past weekend in Anchorage saw the culmination of almost a couple years of artistic vision by local Fairbanks sculptor Rachelle Dowdy.
Sunday, November 1st was the opening dedication for a multi-million dollar renovation to the Ted Stevens International Airport, featuring Rachelle's installation "From Here to There and There to Here" on Concourse "B." The work was commissioned by the municipality as part of the "Percent for Art" program:

"In 1975, the Legislature passed the Percent for Art in Public Places statute requiring the expenditure of up to one percent of the capital construction costs of public buildings for the acquisition and permanent installation of artwork."

This is an extremely competitive and prestigious gig, and Rachelle was one of the four finalists awarded the project in January of 2008. After her mock-ups and engineering details were given the official green light, she began work on the first set of three birds one year ago. Rachelle currently works out of the Annex Gallery, occupying what used to be a garage for her studio, but still, due to limitations in space, it took some juggling with real-estate issues to ultimately produce a flock of fifteen full-sized geese. Their wingspans vary from six to eight feet across, and according to Rachelle; "the bodies are made of ferro-concrete, which means they're hollow and light ... the heaviest being 240lbs and the lightest 140lbs." The carved heads - which you can see a detail of here from a couple work-in-progress snapshots taken earlier this summer - are of spruce, the trees originally felled the year Rachelle was born, and salvaged from a cabin I used to rent in Ester.


Rachelle's phenomenal drive and discipline set her work apart from most everybody else on campus back when I was slogging away at a degree: her presence in the UAF Art department was a kick in the creative ass, and she still remains as one of the comparative handful of artists who graduated from that program (earning her BFA in '96) that are still producing consistently excellent work in this community. It's been nothing short of monumental to watch the evolution of such a large-scale project, eh, take wing, and gradually take shape over such a long period of sustained focus. I've written frequently of how important it can be to know of, interact with, and support other artists out there in the trenches, and having one of Rachelle's caliber around is both a big help and a major inspiration to me personally and many others. Congratulations from all of us!



Rachelle's work is featured here in Fairbanks at the UAF Museum of the North, the Annex Gallery & Exhibition Space and the Well Street Art Company; and she has had many solo shows and been in lots of group exhibitions all around the state, plus many of her pieces can be seen in public venues all around downtown Anchorage.
Not to mention the welcoming ones that will now greet travelers when they first arrive in Alaska...

Rip-Off Artists III

Since I have a perverse, sometimes morbid attraction to strange art by strange people, I just had to click through the eBay auction of prison art to benefit the legal defense of Scott Roeder, pro-life assassin. He commissioned fellow inmate Jason Dubrowski ("...one of the best artists I’ve seen in here") to do a few drawings which Roeder personally signed. The auction has now been suspended, but there's still some examples floating around the intertubes.

While I'm not personally too worried about the charges of glorifying violence with these illustrations, but one of them did trip a red flag - reminded me of an oh, slightly similar composition drawn by syndicated cartoonist Gary McCoy...


Damned if that don't look familiar. At least the clouds have moved. Given the proclivities of the original artist I'll guess there won't be much if any protest over the, eh, homage.
Plus I'm guessing folks who support gunning people down they disagree with probably wouldn't have much of an ethical dilemma over ripping off other folks artwork.
Or with really bad satire.

"When people are laughing, they're generally not killing each other." - Alan Alda

Andrew Paris: "Every Love Girl"

Andrew (and his equally talented brother Isaac) had visited the summer session Cartoon & Comic Art class this past summer - see post here - and he's now started up a webcomic called "Every Love Girl."

Check it out, and it's definitely worth bookmarking as he'll soon be archiving some of his past works... as I've mentioned before, one of the better talents around up here.