When artist Clayton Conner starts working on his murals, onlookers sometimes mistake them for graffiti.
For the first few days, the dots, blurs and lines – that later manifest as intricate scenery or characters – alarm residents, often prompting them to call the police, Conner said. “They’re like, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to call the cops. Someone is graffitiing this.’ Then they see the images emerge and realize it’s actually someone who knows what they are doing.”
Conner, a Skagway resident, is painting the wrap-around mural on the Coliseum Theater building currently operated as Frontier Tradesmen. The building has been prepped for weeks, with white paneling surrounding three sides of the structure’s second story.
Conner started early Tuesday, using as a guide only rudimentary drawings on scraps of paper and images from Lib Hakkinen’s “Haines: The First Century” while painting freehand with a commercial spray gun identical to ones used for painting automobiles.
After roughing out major elements with the sprayer, he added details with different-sized paint brushes, creating a scene of a Tlingit canoe, its crew navigating rough waters.
From time to time, Conner climbed down from his scaffolding, checking scale and perspective from a distance.
The front panel, measuring 26-by-8 feet, will sport the building’s current business name in old-fashioned, antique lettering, Conner said. Two side panels, each measuring 80-by-8 feet, will feature scenes from Haines history, from its time as untouched wilderness and the arrival of First Nations people to the development of Fort William H. Seward and the fishing, cruise ship and heli-skiing industries.
“It’s a tour de force from the very beginning of Haines when there was just natural, raw, majestic land up until modernization,” Conner said.
Conner met building owner Chris Thorgesen last year when they rented space in the same Skagway facility. Thorgesen asked Conner to paint the mural after viewing some of the art in Conner’s former retail space and seeing his work around Skagway, including a large mural on the corner of Sixth Street and Broadway depicting Soapy Smith, the Klondike Gold Rush and other elements of Skagway’s history.
Like the Skagway mural, the Haines piece will be sepia-toned.
The only section that will be in color is the final panel, which includes a colorful burst of the aurora borealis.
“Sepia actually has a lot of hues and a lot of stuff you can do with it that you can’t do with black and white. It has this versatility and warmth,” Conner said.
Conner said he will work 12 to 14 hour days and plans to be done with the mural by the end of June, before heading on to mural projects at schools in Quinhagak and Port Alsworth. “I’m going to be working feverishly until then,” he said.
Conner said he doesn’t like to give too much away about what he is painting ahead of time, because he likes to have people watch it unfold over time.
“That’s going to ruin the surprise,” Conner said when asked for more detail. “I think people need to watch it happen and unfold like a soap opera.”
Business owner Joanie Wagner, who owns an art gallery across the street, said on the first day she was already enjoying how rapidly the images seemed to be changing.
“I can’t tell what it is right now. It’s kind of like the Crazy Horse statue, it takes a while to figure out what it is. But what (Conner) did in Skagway was something,” she said. “I’m happy it’s happening. Downtown really is revitalizing.”
Carpenter Jon Hirsh was so excited by the project on Tuesday he offered to work for Conner as a volunteer.
“I think it’s off the charts. I don’t know what to say. It’s just another expression of beauty here instead of having a run-down place,” Hirsh said. “We’re so lucky to have somebody like (Thorgesen) say, ‘We’re going to do this.’”
Hirsh said he was ecstatic that property owners have funded mural projects in recent years and said he hoped Conner’s would inspire more murals. “The ice house, let’s put some whales on there… It’s completely the right thing to do.”
Conner said he has been drawing since he was old enough to hold a crayon. In 2005, he started a mural painting business in Los Angeles, and eventually completed more than 100 murals along the West Coast, with this one being among the biggest he has undertaken, he said.
In 2012, he moved to Calgary, Alberta, and completed about another dozen murals before moving to Skagway three years ago. Last year, he opened the Alaska Art Colony, which promotes Conner’s artwork while also offering workshops and painting classes to residents.
The top of the Coliseum Building will be capped with an awning that will help protect the mural and recessed lighting that will illuminate it at night.