Artist and gallery owner Debi Knight Kennedy believes in intuition.

Her first connection to Haines came in 1980, when a friend from Juneau took out a map of Alaska and Knight Kennedy pinpointed Haines and said, “That is where I am supposed to be.”

There were “crazy zigzags” getting here, she said in a recent interview.

Knight Kennedy grew up in the Seattle suburb of Richmond Beach and had a “fairly normal, middle class” upbringing.Her…