Kesler Woodward

New and Different

Aurora Betula  ©Kesler Woodward 2017  acrylic on canvas  48" x 48"

In a moment of weakness a couple of months ago, I responded positively to my longtime friend Yolande Fejes' invitation to be included in a group exhibition she's hosting of artwork about the aurora--the "Northern Lights"-- at her Alaska House Gallery this March. Friends were surprised and amused to hear that I'd accepted that invitation. For many years, I taught a graduate Northern Studies course at the University of Alaska called "Visual Images of the North." In this course about the art of Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia, and northern Russia, one of the lectures I gave each semester was titled "Trying to Paint the Aurora." I showed more than 100 paintings, drawings, and prints of or about the aurora, from medieval times to the present, concluding that no one had ever done an entirely successful one. I always told my students that if the great 19th Century American landscape painter Frederic Church couldn't do it, we probably couldn't either, and perhaps we should leave the aurora to God.

As the time for the exhibition neared, I dithered with increasing anxiety about how I might respond to the challenge I'd accepted, and it wasn't until one day a couple of weeks ago, on one of our regular morning runs through the birch forest, that an idea came to me. Aurora Betula is the result. 

Betula, of course, is the scientific name for birches, and my initial thought was that it might be nice to make a little fun of my own obsession with birches and the boreal forest as a subject. Some of my favorite auroral images date back to medieval times, long before scientists learned the real cause of these beautiful, ghostly lights in the night sky. Early artist-observers imagined them as the light from celestial battles, Valkyrie maidens escorting fallen warriors to Valhalla, mythical celestial foxes with their tails on fire, and other wonderful, fanciful explanations. Why, I thought, couldn't they be supernatural birches, sheltering the earth and the more earthbound spruces below in a heavenly arc?

I had no idea what fun it would be making such a painting, and I'm grateful to Yolande and Alaska House Gallery for the challenge that prompted this big, fanciful, celestial scene.

Margo  ©Kesler Woodward 2016  Oil pastel on paper  40" x 32" 

Unlike auroras, portraits of friends are something I have done before, but not for a long while. More than a decade ago, I had a solo show of a dozen or more large (more than four-times life-size) oil pastel portraits, but I've only done a handful since--one every few years. In that first batch of portraits was one of my longtime friend, extraordinary writer Frank Soos, and it hangs on the wall in the living room of the beautiful home he shares with his equally extraordinary artist wife Margo Klass. Every time we've gone to dinner there, I've looked at it and thought I should do one of Margo, too, so in December I finally did.

The same size and medium as the one of Frank, it's handled in exactly the same way--very abstract up close, and somewhat expressionist in color, but quite realistic, from far away.  I don't know whether they will hang the two together, but I'll enjoy knowing I've tried to bring not just one, but both of their images to life in my own way.

Boreal Birch

On July 1, an exhibition that two other Fairbanks artists, a University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist and I have been working on together for more than three years opened at the Pratt Museum in Homer, Alaska. Boreal Birch: Art and Science in the Northern Forest includes 20 of my paintings, 26 of Barry McWayne's black-and-white photographs, and 15 of Margo Klass's constructions, as well as a number of her small, handmade books--all about birch trees and the boreal forest. Accompanying our images are wall texts developed by Kimberley Maher, a PhD student at UAF whose research is all about birch trees. Kimberley not only challenged us with questions about our work and new information about birches over the three years we worked on this project, but developed curricular materials for use in grades K-12 in the schools in conjunction with the exhibit.

This very large show will be on view at the Pratt Museum in Homer through October 2. It travels to the Alaska State Museum in Juneau for November, December, and early January, and will come to Fairbanks, filling all the gallery spaces at Well Street Art Gallery, in February of 2012.  

It was a delight to work on this collaborative effort. The four of us met regularly, comparing work in progress, talking about birches and the northern forest, and influencing one another. We visited one another's studios. We went with Kimberley into the woods to tap birches for sap and take cores from trunks, and we peppered her with questions about the physiology of the birches themselves.

Barry McWayne, whose untimely death ended his direct participation last August, was the only artist I know who has devoted as much time, thought, and imagery to birch trees as I have. Working in two entirely different mediums, we shared similar visions of the individuality of the birches' trunks, the moods and atmosphere of the forest, and what we both called the "pelts" of the birches themselves. He and I had talked for more than two decades about doing a show of birch images together. Fortunately, Barry had already taken and printed many photographs in preparation for this exhibit, and we were able to use a large number of them, along with some of his earlier birch images, to represent him and his vision fully in the show.

Margo Klass has delighted in birch trees for years as well, incorporating images of them in her work long before she came to Alaska in the last decade.  Her exquisitely crafted, three-dimensional, magical and mysterious altarpiece-like boxes and handmade books combine natural elements from parts of the trees themselves with found objects related only visually or metaphorically to the trees and the forest--all of them transformed by juxtaposition and artistic alchemy.

In the last several years, I have been involved in several collaborative projects with other artists and writers, and the experience each time has been energizing, broadening, and surprising. From a very large scale public art project for the Anchorage International Airport on which I worked with Anchorage sculptor Sheila Wyne and Franz Mayer of Munich Studio in Germany, to two collaborative projects with Alaska's current State Writer Peggy Shumaker and several with Alaska writer Frank Soos, each project has led me to think differently about my own work, posed new challenges for me, and opened up new directions.  I like working alone in my studio, and would never want to change that basic way of life, but these collaborations have been rich leavening for both my life and my work, and I'm looking forward to more of them in the future.

Kimberley, Margo and her husband Frank Soos, who wrote the essay for the brochure we produced about the exhibition, Barry's widow Dorli McWayne, who allowed us to use his images and helped me mat and frame them, and I worked together on the installation in the beautiful exhibition space at the Pratt Museum, with great support from the museum's staff.  We were even more pleased with the results of our collaboration than we had hoped or imagined. If you can make it to Homer, Alaska, this summer, we think the exhibit is one you will enjoy. The following are the dates for the show at its various venues:

Pratt Museum - Homer, Alaska - July 1-October 2, 2011

Alaska State Museum - Juneau, Alaska - November 4, 2011 - January 14, 2012

Well Street Art Company - Fairbanks, Alaska - February 3-26, 2012

Birchbark

Chapters in Birchbark, Forty Pages at a Time   ©Kesler Woodward 2011   Two panels, each 20" x 16"   Birchbark, copper and steel nails on wood

A fascinating exhibit is on view at Well Street Art Gallery in Fairbanks this month. Betula Neoalaskana: Celebrating One Tree includes a number of art works of all kinds made from a single birch tree from the boreal forest here, and more than a dozen artists' "books"made from parts of other birches in the area.

The One Tree idea originated in Cheshire, England in 1998, when a community of artists and artisans made an astonishing variety of products from artwork to furniture, all from a single local oak. Jan Dawe of the University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences, a longtime admirer of Alaska Paper Birch (Betula neoalaskana), started a project of the same sort with a single birch felled at Cache Creek in 2009. OneTree Alaska has grown to include art, science and education, and projects in many local schools, as well as the works in the current exhibit at Well Street.

The handmade artists' books portion of the show, art works of all kinds using serial imagery and made from parts of seventeen other trees recently felled near Fairbanks, was inspired and organized by my friend and fellow Fairbanks artist Margo Klass. Margo's well known artist books and assemblages have been shown in galleries and museums for many years, the last half dozen in solo and group exhibitions throughout Alaska, and she has taught classes regularly in bookbinding and related techniques here and throughout the country (see margoklass.com).

Chapters in Birchbark, Forty Pages at a Time  is my personal contribution to the exhibition. As I say in my brief statement for the show, birches and the boreal forest have been my trademark images for more than three decades, and I have made hundreds of paintings and drawings and prints of individual birch trees, but I have only made a handful of images from the bark of the trees themselves. 

Chapters in Birchbark is made from a large piece of bark from a birch identified by the scientists who are studying the trees--which had been felled for other purposes--as NR7 (Nenana Ridge 7).  Jan Dawe has told me that NR7 was the second oldest of the trees on the site, based on coring and counting of its growth rings, and quite possibly one of the oldest birches in Alaska.  It is very, very old for a birch tree, predating the U.S. Civil War by  a couple of decades. I have never worked with bark as old and thick as the piece from which this artwork is made--a strip almost 4 feet high and more than two feet wide, which curled almost immediately after peeling into a very tight, strong, 6-inch diameter roll.

As in previous pieces of this sort I have made, I painstakingly unrolled this bark and forced it flat again by attaching it to a sturdy wooden backing with a patterned arrangement of nails. I then added cutout pieces from the same piece of bark, or cut away layers of the surface, to create the images. 

Birch Panels 1-4: For Barry McWayne  ©2011 Margo Klass and Kesler Woodward

In the same exhibition is another artists' book that Margo Klass and I made in honor of our dear, late friend Barry McWayne.  A close friend of mine for more than 30 years, with whom I had worked, traveled, and celebrated many life events, Barry was one of Alaska's best and most widely admired artist photographers when he died unexpectedly last summer. He and Margo and I had been working for almost two years toward an exhibition of our artwork, all about birches, which will open this summer at the Pratt Museum in Homer, Alaska, and travel to the Alaska State Museum in Juneau this fall and Well Street Art Gallery in Fairbanks next February.  As our statement about the piece for the current exhibit explains:

"Before his sudden death last summer Barry McWayne came to Jan Dawe’s house to select birch material for his One Tree project. He walked up and down the row of bark samples looking for the piece with the most interesting formations and variations. He settled on NR8, a pre-Civil War tree, oldest of the Nenana Ridge group. We’ve made this book in Barry’s honor, not as he would have made it, but as an attempt to honor the way he was uniquely able to isolate and preserve beautiful passages of bark in his well-known photographs."

It is a privilege to have been able to work on this piece in Barry's honor, from the bark he chose. As I said when I spoke at his memorial service last summer, Barry was not only a dear friend, but was the only artist I know who has loved birch trees as deeply and explored them in images as fervently as I have myself.

It was also a privilege to work on this piece with Margo, in whose style and technique the work is made. I have long admired Margo's work, and I appreciate it even more now, after being introduced firsthand to the painstaking, labor-intensive processes that are involved in the making of her magical, mysterious boxes.

Different Kinds of Portraits

Darlene ©Kesler Woodward 2010 Acrylic on paper 28" x 20" (image)

Several years ago, I painted a considerably larger-than-lifesize acrylic on paper portrait of my good friend Len Edgerly, who with his wife Darlene splits his time between homes in Denver, Colorado and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Len has had his portrait framed and on the wall of their Denver condo for more than four years, and I've enjoyed seeing it every time I've visited them there. When I was in Denver last summer, they decided it was time they had one of Darlene as well, the same size and medium, and I've just completed it in the last week.

I've known and been crazy about Darlene for more than ten years now, and so it was a delight to work on her image. As always, I was amazed at how quickly her personality came to life as I started finding my way through her features. Darlene's lively, bright spirit shone from her eyes within hours of beginning the painting, and it just continued to grow as I worked my way into her beaming smile. It still seems like a miracle to me, this coming-to-life that happens as portraits grow on the page.

You can see my portrait of Len and read my original comments about it here, in my Sept. 14, 2005 post on this blog.  Those who regularly enjoy Len's outstanding weekly podcasts featuring news and interviews about electronic book readers, The Kindle Chronicles and The Reading Edge, or who frequent his blog, may have already noticed his portrait in the background of photos of him in his living room, and have almost certainly enjoyed some of Darlene's own wonderful commentary in his podcasts.

Young Birch Portrait ©Kesler Woodward 2010 Oil on board 10" x 8" (image) 12 1/2" x 10 1/2" (framed)

I have noted in previous posts how nerve wracking it is for me to do work on commission, and how portraits are especially fraught with anxiety in that regard, so it was a great relief and pleasure, two days after shipping the painting to Len and Darlene, to get Len's e-mail message with the subject heading, "We Love It!" 

One of the many nice things about painting birch portraits is that birches are much less worrisome subjects. As I've written and talked about often, I paint them not only because they are among the most beautiful things I've ever seen, but because they give me great freedom to do the things I want with paint. These "portraits" are of real, individual trees, but they truly are abstract paintings that happen to look like birches.

Even large, mature Alaska birches have a surprising range of color in their bark, but the young trunks, especially, are a riot of hues. After more than 30 years of painting them in every locale and season, I'm still amazed by their variety, and still learning about the way latitude, light, time of day and time of year, soil and surroundings affect their appearance. Young Birch Portrait is the latest in the growing series of birch portraits I've been doing since the first of this year. I'm already thinking and feeling my way toward the major exhibition on Alaska Birch that fellow artists Barry McWayne, Margo Klass, and I, along with University of Alaska scientist Kimberley Maher, will be mounting at the Pratt Museum  in Homer, Alaska in July through September of 2011.