Haines artist Katie Craney shows work across the state

Katie Craney is a Haines artist whose work has shown around the state. Her latest show will be in Skagway at the end of May and in Haines this September. Craney took a break from art after school, but now her most recent work is traveling to museums and galleries around the state. KHNS took a walk on the Chilkat River with Craney to learn more about her practice.

Katie Craney walked down the bank of the Chilkat River just a few miles out the highway. Her boots made sucking sounds sounds in the mud.

“It’s stunning,” she said. It was unclear whether she was talking about the view or the change on the river. “This is insane. There’s hardly an ice.”

It was a brilliant sunny day in an early spring. She turned her face up at the mountains across the river and then out to the mudflats. This is the subject of Craney’s art. Place, change, interaction. She held up a small piece of work she created using salvaged metal.

“The metal is a chimney pipe,” she explained. “I found it at the recycling center. Im interested in using scrap metal because there’s so much of it and we should reuse what we use.”

The salvaged pieces that once had specific uses—a stovepipe or a plastic net bag for fruit—become abstracted symbols. In her compositions they interact with and offset her photographs of Haines and other northern landscapes. In this one, she’s overlaid a photograph of Rainbow Glacier over the metal. Stovepipe and glacier, ice and heat, man-made and natural. Craney’s work insists on the connection between the two even while the proximity highlights the difference.

“Everything is connected,” she said. “We’re connected as much as the bear or the salmon. When you start changing elements of it and things start becoming altered and inaccessible and unavailable and disappearing. And those are the things that keep me up at night. And I don’t know how to deal with those feelings other than making a art about it and hoping people can connect.”

Her work isn’t just a tribute to this place, but also an alarm bell.  Her art is a reaction to the changes she sees in the landscape around her. She showed me a piece she created using an image from an old issue of the magazine Oceana. She said the content of old magazine like this one surprise her.

“The imagery in them is shocking because they’re talking about climate change in the 70s. They’re looking at the Arctic and Alaska and where they are projecting things and here we in are in 2019 and the things they are saying are happening or have happened or are going to happen.”

Craney earned a degree in fine arts from the University of Wisconsin – Stout. But after graduation she ended up working for the National Parks service. She spent seven summers working for parks and let her art practice go. But then in 2015 she showed a few pieces at the Haines Sheldon Museum.

“I think any artist, you’re just an artist and you can’t repress it. It’s just going to come out no matter what, sometimes with a vengeance, and I think that’s kind of what happened,” she laughed.

Since then Craney has reopened the door to art. Her work has shown in solo exhibitions around the state. She’s been working on her latest show for the past two years. It’s called Landfalls: Dedications to Alaska Women Writers and Storytellers.

She said this one is about language, learning, and other people’s interpretations of place. It has shown in Homer and Soldotna. It will be in Skagway for the North Words Writers Symposium, then Fairbanks, Haines, and Colorado.

Craney’s work uses found and salvaged objects along with photographs, but she said she’s never considered herself a photographer. It’s just one part of her process.

“I think [photography is] an interesting play in…” Craney paused to think as she looked out over the water. “Stopping time for a second and just observing and noticing what’s happening at this particular moment at this particular time..and why is that important.”

As we speak everything is moving. The season arcs towards spring. The Chilkat river flows into the canal. A helicopter flies low over the water, followed by a plane. Cars pass behind us in the highway. Then, the sound of motors fade and we can hear the ravens somewhere above us.

 

You can see Craney’s work online or in the permanent collection at the Sheldon Museum in Haines.