Arts Outlook

Sheldon Museum Six-Week Spotlight: Concept of HOME

“Places do not belong to us. We belong to them.” – Kazim Ali

What is home?

That’s an intriguing question in Haines, where most residents are from elsewhere.

Lifelong resident Debra Schnabel explores the concept in an art installation that opened this week at the Haines Sheldon Museum’s Hakkinen Gallery.

Part of the museum’s Six-Week Spotlight series, the piece includes a living room, a teepee, a baseball field’s home plate and a Toyota Tercel.

“Putting a car in the Hakkinen Gallery. I don’t think that will ever be topped,” remarked Zack James, the museum’s collections manager. Comments from out-of-state visitors left at an exhibit register this week include “thought-provoking,” “powerful” and “startling.”

“All the reactions I’ve gotten are pretty positive,” James said. “But it’s conceptual. It’s very conceptual.”

Viewers enter the exhibit through a living room, complete with 1970s-era plywood paneling, family photos, magazines, books and a side table, then move through walls of quotations about home from famous writers.

Other elements include flags of foreign nations, Haines Glacier Bear basketball and cheerleading uniforms, photos and statistics about refugees and homelessness and the Tercel, actually half a car cut lengthwise, stuffed with the possessions of a person who might be living in it: canned food, portable stove, a box of books and a dog bowl. A COVID mask dangles from the windshield above a Bible on the dashboard.

Schnabel said this week that she deliberated about including a television in the living room scene and said she has found people attach the word “home” to different things. “To some people, home is person, to others it’s a physical thing.”

In her artist’s statement, Schnabel said the installation was inspired by her own life experiences, by news coverage of refugees around the world, as well as by books including Simon Winchester’s “Land,” and Kazim Ali’s “Northern Lights.”

“I have never lived anywhere but Haines. This presents ambiguity because I am a first-generation, European-descent Alaskan,” Schnabel wrote. “Though Haines is my home I sense that it is first foremost home to the Tlingit people, though they purportedly were Asian immigrants from long ago.”

The exhibit will be open for viewing during First Friday activities on Main Street, 5-7 p.m. on Aug. 5.

Alaska Arts Confluence’s featured First Friday Artist

Tia Heywood says seascapes remain a major inspiration for her art.

A 2013 Haines High School graduate who earned an Ivy League degree in art and ethnic studies, Heywood will be featured at the Alaska Arts Confluence gallery during First Friday activities Aug. 5.

After attending school in Rhode Island, Heywood now lives in Renton, Wash., studying toward a degree in library and information science. She’s hoping to write and illustrate children’s books. “I want to start blending my art and my writing.”

Her most recent local exhibit in 2017 featured touchable wood and felt sculptures inspired by the wildlife and natural history of Southeast Alaska. Next week she’ll be displaying “Acrylics on Wood: Observations of the Natural World in Miniature.”

Heywood said she’s been painting small scenes of landscapes and animals like snails and butterflies as gifts and for small commissions for several years. “I wanted a chance to put them out there and give people an opportunity for people to see what I’ve been doing.”

Her exhibit also will include offbeat collages she creates using vintage postcards collected by her grandmother and captions and photos from a National Geographic book of fishes. “An Aristocrat Among Small Southern Fishes” features a salmon in a red gown, towering over a school of herring-like fish.

“I found ones I thought were funny. I was enjoying them enough I thought I’d exhibit them as well,” she said.

Heywood said she has painted all her life, mostly on the themes of ocean and sky. “I don’t think I could live any distance from ocean or water.” She said she’s been enjoying recent landscape painting outings with local artists Donna Catotti and Yuko Hays.

Hammer Museum turns 20

Twenty years ago, Dave Pahl bought a tiny building on Main Street to display his collection of 600 hammers that residents found interesting.

The collection has grown to 2,500 hammers of all kinds on display and Pahl’s ambitious Hammer Museum has been featured in publications worldwide. New hammers arrive as donations in the mail.

“Some of our best stuff comes from donations from people who’ve come here and then go to a flea market and send us something they think we’d like,” Pahl said this week. “We have a lot of field workers.”

“The fuel that keeps the Hammer Museum going is that people appreciate it. If there was any money to be made on it, there’d be a hammer museum in every town,” Pahl said. “But who ever thought we’d be hanging on by a thread for 20 years. With any luck, we’ll last a few more… It’s been an enjoyable sacrifice.”

For First Friday events on Aug. 5, Pahl will be holding a birthday party he’s calling a “Hammer Hoedown,” featuring a game of “hammer horseshoes.” He’ll also have available copies of “The Improved Hammer,” a new book about the museum, as well as refreshments and games.

Residents who haven’t toured the museum recently may not have seen the museum’s “art nook,” featuring an artistic perspective on man’s oldest tool. It includes a glass hammer crafted by Washington resident Ed Schmidt at Mud Bay’s Windy Point kiln, as well as a “poi pounder,” a Hawaiian stone hammer and grinding board created by resident Kalani Kanahele.

Terry Jacobson of Haines created a piece featuring varieties of nails. “One of the things that keeps us going is that locals have given us so much, in so many way,” Pahl said.

The museum’s favorite hammer may be a hammer-shaped chunk of wood that a homeless man used 15 years ago to rescue a pet dog trapped in a car that was sinking at the downtown boat harbor. Support for the exhibit of the “dog-saving hammer” has defeated his attempts to take it down, Pahl said.

Next Friday’s birthday party will include music by Burl Sheldon and Nancy Berland and by The Fishpickers.

Bald Eagle Foundation says goodbye to summer interns

Each summer, a half-dozen college students come to Haines to serve as interns at the American Bald Eagle Foundation.

Besides natural history activities for families, First Friday activities at the foundation on Aug. 5 will include a farewell to this summer’s crew of interns, including Beck Climie of Georgia, Ghennya Shain of California, Hayley Goebel of Illinois, Madison Kennedy of Alabama, MaKayla Ramsey of Juneau and Rynn Cobb of Alabama.

Most interns need to get back to school by this time of the year, explained Ashley Bivin, the foundation’s museum curator.

Four of the interns learned how to train and care for raptors; two others gained experience in museum collection management and exhibit development. The foundation will be open 5-7 p.m.

Vintage clothing booth will be at the Fair

Hundreds of pieces of classic, ethnic and vintage fashions will be offered for sale at “Rosehip Vintage,” a booth at this weekend’s Southeast Alaska State Fair.

Amelia Nash said she and sister Lenore Nash are parting with dresses that range from 1950s crinoline party dresses to 1970s maxi hostess gowns, plus fashions from Thailand, Vietnam, New Zealand, Alaska and the West Coast.

“We collected them for a reason – because we fell in love with them, but there are only so many dresses you can wear, especially in Haines,” Amelia explained this week. She estimated the inventory at about 400 outfits, including ones from the voluminous collection of late resident Erma Schnabel.

“I’ve been cleaning and pressing clothes for three days straight,” Nash said at midweek.

Nash said she and Nori would continue selling the collection on a “pop-up” basis after the fair.