For months, the Haines Sheldon Museum has been working to get Whitehorse artist Lyn Fabio’s artwork into the country.

Fabio’s pieces are primarily made from pig intestine, though she also incorporates moose and caribou antler, porcupine quills, seeds and other natural materials.

Since January, museum staff has been in communication with border representatives about how to legally transport Fabio’s pieces across the border for her show “terra/mare,” which opens 5 p.m. Friday.

Museum community coordinator Madeline Witek said talks of itemized letters, import bonds, export licenses, customs brokers and other red tape almost canceled the show.

Finally, the bureaucratic details were smoothed out, and Fabio was setting up her show Wednesday afternoon in the Elisabeth Hakkinen Gallery.

Fabio was introduced to traditional gut work in 1989, at a show in Juneau called “Inner Skins/Outer Skins,” exhibiting traditional and contemporary work with seal and walrus intestine.

Fascinated by the material’s translucence and “magical” quality, Fabio went back to Whitehorse and decided she needed to find a way to work with gut. Seal and walrus intestine isn’t readily available in the Yukon, so she started using a similar substance: pig intestines, which she buys wholesale in the form of sausage casings.

Thinner than traditional seal and walrus intestine, a single layer of dried hog gut feels like a cross between tissue paper and fine silk. Fabio layers and molds the gut to create vessels, parkas, quilt-like hangings and other sculptures.

The pieces in “terra/mare” are informed by Fabio’s impressions of nature in Whitehorse, where she focuses on the forest and earth, as well as Haines, where she had her first experience with the ocean.

One piece, a vase-like sculpture, is patterned with dyed pieces of hog gut resembling seaweed and kelp. Another vessel features hog gut adornments molded by mussel shells.

Much of Fabio’s art is embellished with fiber work, including a hog gut parka with a hood bordered by material that resembles moss and lichen. (Fabio had wanted to use real moss and lichen on the piece, but decided to use textiles so the parka could travel internationally, including to an exhibit in South Korea.)

Light is a key element in Fabio’s shows, and many of the pieces in “terra/mare” will either be hung in front of the Hakkinen Gallery’s large window or illuminated by artificial sources.

One, a quilt-like hanging called “Field of Dreams,” will be backlit by a large lamp.

Creating the piece involved a process called photo emulsion transfer, where Fabio took Polaroid photos of leaves and grass and transferred the images onto the quilt “patches,” made of hog gut. The patches also act as pockets, which are stuffed with milkweed and Arctic cotton seeds.

This will be Fabio’s first show in Alaska. She will briefly present on her work at 6 p.m. Friday, though the opening will run from 5 to 7 p.m. as part of Haines’s monthly First Friday celebration.

“I think it is exciting to get artwork from farther away than Haines,” said community coordinator Witek. “It’s nice to see what people are doing in our neighboring towns.”

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