Two residents are among 25 individuals chosen by the Rasmuson Foundation for a 2017 individual artist’s project award. Some 335 applications were received.

Christy Tengs Fowler and Jessica Meadowlark Plachta each won a “project award” worth $7,500.

The awards are to be used on a specific, short-term project that has clear benefits to the artist’s growth and development, according to the foundation.

Tengs Fowler will use the money to hire local musicians to record 25 songs she’s written. The songs will be part of a documentary, “Above the Bamboo Room,” about her life growing up in Haines and around the bar and restaurant her family has owned 64 years.

Tengs Fowler’s songs are inspired by the advice of TV personality Dr. Phil, who specializes on motivation and self-help. She hopes the songs featured in the documentary will make their way to Dr. Phil.

“I would like to raise money through (Dr. Phil’s) foundation, to have the songs help people because most of the songs are about getting people out of their circumstances,” Tengs Fowler said.

Tengs Fowler writes the lyrics and music to all her songs. She uses a piano to compose, but doesn’t play much in public. “I’m not a singer, I’m not a player, I just like to write,” she said.

Her favorite song, “Float,” tells the story of a man recounting a swimming survival lesson he learned in the school pool and how he uses that advice to get through hard times.

”

Plachta won the award to pen a memoir about growing up with “an idealistic group of counter-culture nature freaks” who worked as commercial tree-planters.

“I spent a lot of time on clearcuts growing up,” Plachta said. “We had a lot of adventures along the way. We planted, collectively, many millions of trees.”

Plachta said her stories will combine the adventures and insights of people from her early life. Stories include ones about her father being struck by lightning and the discovery and rescue of a woman held captive along an old logging road.

“Those stories will be interspersed with the thoughts of these people who had, what I think is, a respectable outlook on life and a desire to leave something for future generations, not just take what they could from this life and move on,” Plachta said. “That’s my intent, to honor the people who gave me this fulfilling childhood, and to get their stories down for posterity.”

She’ll travel to Washington this summer for a reunion where she will record interviews for the memoir.

Rasmuson Foundation Program Officer Jeff Baird said this year’s awards selection process was “extremely competitive” and they received more applications than in recent memory.

A panel of 12 experts in various artistic mediums from across the country chose award recipients.

“It’s an extremely humbling process to see the immense amounts of talent across Alaska,” Baird said. The fact that Haines is represented shows the talent that’s in that community. Generally, they’ve been represented well in the past. The fact they have a vibrant arts community has something to do with that.”