Haines’ First Friday features new artists, new works and new venues around town

First Friday in Haines is featuring new artists, new works, and new venues around town. This month there are artistic explorations in wax, painting, ink, photography, and never before seen historical Northwest Coast formline. KHNS’ Corinne Smith reports.

First Friday actually kicked off the night before at the Haines Brewing Company, with the opening of Haines school art teacher Giselle Miller’s new exhibit called “Wax and Water,” using a painting technique called encaustics 

“So it’s actually pigment that is melted and heated into wax, and then painted on to a surface,” Miller explains. “Which is a really fun medium, and very different, requires a little bit larger of a studio space, and can result in some gorgeous moving pigments that do some new fun things, you know, reactions you don’t usually get with just regular acrylics and oils.”

Miller has been working in the school art room, using heat guns and blow torches and a variety of paints. The result is a series of paintings on hand-made cedar boxes, with layers of color and a movement effect. For Miller, it inspired moving waterscapes and marine forms.

“When I played around with it, I felt like a lot of my pieces, and the color scheme I was using were looking like stormy weather paintings. And so I wanted to continue that theme throughout the series…yeah, stormy but they can also feel still. There’s lots of movement, there’s lots of fluidity just because of the melting wax,” she said.

Giselle Miller’s “Wax and Water” exhibit will be up at the brewery through the month of November. 

Also on Main Street, Ampersand AK is showcasing new work by local artist Merrick Bochart, an exploration of painting and ink called “Little Wonders.” The Alaska Arts Confluence gallery will feature a variety of artists, and Alaska Rod’s will feature pieces by photographer and author Larry Johansen. 

Corlix, formerly the Yarn Shop, features works by Haines family Cassie and Joshua Benassi, and their children Corvus and Felix, ages seven and five. Cassie Benassi says they grew from online sales to the brick-and-mortar shop, which opened this summer in downtown Haines. 

“So Corlix is a group effort really,”Benassi said. “I do the wire wrap work, my husband does the fabricated work, and then both our boys also from time to time make jewelry to put into the shop.”

The shop displays the family’s artisanal jewelry, salves, and crystals from around the world. 

This First Friday they’re featuring 10-year-old artist Patience Nelson, who will be exhibiting her drawings, paintings and sculpture. 

Benassi says they’re focused on showcasing young artists in Haines.

“They work really hard on their art,” she said. “And every time I’ve had a kid in here so far, they’ve been really excited because they’re doing something that grownups usually get to do when they work just as hard as the grownups do on their art. Giving them the boost is hopefully going to help in the long run and keep them really inspired in doing what they love to do.” 

The Haines Sheldon Museum is showing some new pieces as part of its “Treasures from the Vault” exhibit. On display are selected items from the museum’s own collection, continuing the theme of locally sourced, natural mediums and with some additions. 

This month are several traditional Tlingit bentwood boxes, handmade and painted sometime in the 1880s, and used for storage or trading goods, according to museum collections coordinator Zachary James. 

“The designs on bentwood boxes were usually abstract. That was because things like killer whales, eagles and ravens and frogs and things like that are usually owned by a specific house or clan. So things with those kinds of designs weren’t generally traded amongst other people,” James said. “So, they would make these abstract designs and that way it was okay to trade amongst different people or use it for basically resale even though you know, this was before the adoption of currency or basically, you know, colonial culture or anything like that Western culture with money.”

James recently used an infrared camera to capture images unseen below the dark varnish, or patina, of the bentwood boxes – revealing striking formline designs.

“It’s  probably the first time and you know, in a couple 100 years that these designs and these pieces of art have even been able to be appreciated or looked at.”

The exhibit is up now in the Hakkinen gallery of the Haines Sheldon Museum through the end of the month.