Kesler Woodward

Birch Woods for Denali

Birch Woods for Denali     ©Kesler Woodward 2010     Acrylic on Canvas     2 panels - each 48" x 60"

Nineteen years ago, Missy and I took our son Eli to Denali Elementary School in Fairbanks for his first day of kindergarten. That day, I asked his teacher Katie Brown whether I could come in to read a story to the class once a week. Little did I know, that day, that I'd still be reading to that kindergarten class every Wednesday I'm in town, almost two decades later. It is, quite simply, the most purely unalloyed joy of every week in my life. 

Katie Brown is a remarkable teacher, whose main mission in life seems to be trying to catch one of her students doing something good, something well, something right, and reinforce it. And Denali is an extraordinary public school--perhaps not unique, but certainly rare in Alaska or anywhere else, in its stability, sense of shared purpose and mutual encouragement, and delight in its mission. I got to know all of Eli's elementary school teachers well, reading to each of his classes weekly as he continued through the sixth grade. Five of those seven teachers are still there, almost twenty years later, along with many of the staff who helped make his elementary school experience such a rich and rewarding one. When he moved on to Middle School, I stayed, reading to Katie Brown's kindergarten class, and for several years now to another of Eli's wonderful teachers, Sharlee Reabold's, second grade class as well.

Tim Doran, who took over as Principal when Eli was in first grade, is still the Principal today, and his leadership has unquestionably fostered and helped sustain the school's continuing spirit and sense of close community. So I shouldn't have been surprised, even though I was, when he approached me several months ago to say that he wanted to commission a large painting for the dramatic two-story stairwell on the south end of the building--a space which is not only beautifully lit by big, high, southern and eastern windows, but is visible through those windows, especially on dark winter days, as the school is approached by road from the south. 

Tim wanted birch trees, birch forest--my signature subject matter--and I was happy to oblige. When the two 4' x 5'  paintings I've just finished are installed side by side, a foot or so apart, high in that space, I hope they will look like windows themselves, into the heart of the great boreal forest that surrounds both the school and the Fairbanks community.

Denali Elementary is full of brightly colored, wonderful art of all kinds, ranging from student work, to historical paintings purchased in the 1950's, to stained glass, sculpture, murals, mobiles, and more, some but not all of it commissioned through Alaska's Public Art Program when its new building was completed just a few years ago. Tim was able to find funding for my paintings through fundraising and the support of his PTA, and I am deeply honored that I will have a major piece of my artwork permanently enshrined in this remarkable place.  

 

Canopy Mosaic on View to Travelers at the Anchorage International Airport

The newly renovated, completely rebuilt "B" Concourse at the Anchorage International Airport was opened to travelers in early November.  You do have to be traveling in order to see the artwork, as it is beyond the security screening area. But screening for the two main concourses was moved to a new location, and now travelers heading out on any of the major airlines from Anchorage have to pass under the ceiling mosaic, on their way to their gates. The artwork is located just past the screening area, at the junction of the "B" and "C" concourses.

I have posted many images here already of the mosaics in production and in installation, but none of the finished work in the finished space.  Anchorage sculptor Sheila Wyne--my partner on the project--and I hired Hal Gage, one of Alaska's best, and best-known photographers, to document the work, and I am pleased to share here several of my favorite of the many images he produced for us.

The artwork is ©Kesler Woodward and Sheila Wyne, and all of the photographs in this post are ©Hal Gage.

     

Canopy Column and Ceiling Mosaics Complete

Installation of the Canopy ceiling and column mosaics is finally complete, and work is nearly done on the new concourse where they reside at the Anchorage International Airport. 

In about a month, the huge wall that has separated the major B Concourse construction site from the C Concourse and the rest of the main terminal for two years will come down, and passengers will walk by our mosaic column and beneath the Canopy ceiling.  

Installation of the mosaic sections on the 9 1/2 ft. tall, 2 1/2 ft. diameter column was quick, in comparison with the huge mosaic above. It took Herbert, Daniel, and Erik only two days to install the column's mosaic sections. The ceiling has no grout separating its 750,000 or more individual, close-fitting tesserae. Because the column's surface is curved, however, slightly spreading the gap between adjoining pieces, and because it is touchable by passersby at ground level, it got a solid, dark gray grout. The darker lines between the pieces not only give it an even greater sense of solidity, but enhance its already somewhat more abstract design. 

From the start, our concept was to make the column intriguing from a distance, beckoning for closer investigation, but not a realistic "birch trunk." Our hope is that passengers will see this single mosaic column as they come out of the security screening area or head from their planes toward this junction of the two main concourses, and will want to examine it more closely. Only when they get near to it will the ceiling come into view, and we hope that the dramatic appearance of the forest canopy overhead will not only reveal the column's reference, but surprise and delight all who walk beneath it.

I took hundreds of photographs during the nine days I spent on site during the installation, and I have tried to give some sense here of the complex logistical process of installation itself, as well as the scale of the imagery and the richness and density of its surface. The images below show Herbert, Daniel, and Erik installing some of the last sections of column mosaic and beginning the grouting process.

What I have not been able to convey, I realize, is the overall impact of the piece, or how it looks as a whole. We have already begun work with a professional photographer who will document the finished artwork thoroughly, and who will "stitch" together digital images of the ceiling in order to show it in a single view with minimal distortion. 

When that is done, I will post some of those images here on the website. But believe me when I say that you'll have to walk through this terminal, approach the column from a distance, and have the ceiling suddenly loom overhead as you traverse the two-story, clerestory space to appreciate its full impact. 

A Busy Month

As exciting as the mosaic installation process has been, it's far from the only thing I've been working on in the last month. In my next post, I'll share some images of and comments on an exhibition of my work that just opened last week in South Carolina, and the two large double-portrait commissions that I've completed in the last six weeks.  

Here is a sneak preview of my work on view in September at the Aiken (South Carolina) Center for the Arts.

Mosaic Installation Continues

Yesterday afternoon Daniel installed the final section of ceiling mosaic on Canopy. We are more than two weeks into the installation process, and the monumental ceiling image is finally complete.  Over the next several days, Herbert, Daniel, and Erik will complete the final cleanup and touch-up work on the ceiling and install the mosaics on the 9 1/2 ft. tall, 2 1/2 ft. diameter column that will lead viewers' eyes to the panorama above. 

It's impossible for me to photograph the entire ceiling at once, so what I've posted here are some images that will, I hope, give you a sense of its scale and drama.  I'll try to put up a few images next week of the column, but I don't imagine that I'll be able to convey adequately a sense of the whole scene. We will have in a professional photographer with greater photographic skills and wider angle lenses, when not only our installation, but the concourse renovation itself, is complete, and I will post images of it then that I hope will do it more justice.

         

     

Erik, Herbert, and Daniel -- very tired after more than two weeks' work on the ceiling installation, but triumphant at having the last ceiling section in place.

Canopy - Installation Underway on Anchorage Airport Mosaics

I am excited to report that the installation of Canopy, the major mosaic ceiling and column for the Anchorage International Airport that I have been working on with Anchorage sculptor Sheila Wyne for more than two years, is underway. 

Sheila, our project partner Bruce Farnsworth, and I met on Monday morning with Glen Fuglestad, Department of Transportation Project Manager for the entire massive airport renovation. Joining us at Glen's office were Erik Breese, an Anchorage artist and skilled craftsman we'd hired to assist the mosaic installers from Munich, and the two master mosaicists themselves. Herbert Hahn and Daniel Heinkelein did virtually all of the fabrication of the mosaic itself, working steadily since last winter and putting in lots of overtime to have it here on time for installation.

Herbert and Daniel had scheduled two days of onsite planning and preparation before beginning to put mosaic on the ceiling, but thanks to Sheila's and Bruce's extraordinary efforts, coupled with those of the Mosaic department and Susanne Tarraf at Mayer of Munich in Germany, the two crates containing all the mosaic sections were through customs and awaiting us on site, along with scaffolding, tools, and everything needed to start work.

Herbert, who has been doing this kind of work for forty years, said he had never reached an installation site with things more ready, and within four hours of seeing the space for the first time, they were installing mosaic.

The packaging, shipping, and organization of the mosaic sections are logistical marvels in and of themselves. All the mosaic sections, as well as work clothes and a box of specialized tools, came in two large wooden crates. Each carefully padded cardboard box within the crates is numbered with the sections it contains, and is keyed to the overall map of entire ceiling image.

Erik mixes the glue and mortar to the right consistency and trowels a thin coat on the back of a section. Daniel or Herbert trowels a base of the same mix on the durarock-covered ceiling, and the section is pressed into place and pounded and kneaded with a rubber mallet to secure it seamlessly. The next piece repeats the process, snugging perfectly with the one before. 

            

As with everything Herbert and Daniel do, it looks easy when you watch them, but Sheila and I both know from having worked on the fabrication with Herbert in the studio in Munich that that is an illusion, built on his lifetime of practice. We feel again, as we did on our trips to Munich, lucky to be working with people who are the best in the world at what they do.

The rhythm of the process is occasionally broken by the need to cut out sections for the sprinkler heads in the ceiling and rebuild the mosaic piece by piece around them, to saw out the section of the image impinged upon by the beam that crosses the clerestory space, by the need for a different kind of scaffolding, or the breakdown and repair of the heavy duty drill used for mixing the cement...a host of little things. But thanks to Sheila's readiness to get and bring anything that's needed on a moment's notice, the extraordinary helpfulness of everyone from PCL--the prime contractor for the project--and all their subcontractors on the site, Glen Fuglestad's support, and Herbert and Daniel's flexibility and experience, the pace of progress is astonishing. 

Barring unforeseen complications, the ceiling may be done in another week, and work underway on the 9 1/2 ft. tall, 2 1/2 ft. diameter mosaic column that reaches from floor to ceiling near one corner of low side of the soaring space. When the construction barrier walls are removed and the newly remodeled areas opened in late September, the column will be visible nearby after coming through Security toward either of the two main concourses in this main terminal, and visible from nearly the entire length of both. 

The ceiling, in its 2-story, clerestory space, is located at the junction of those two main concourses, and becomes visible only as travelers approach and pass under it. Our hope is that the column, a somewhat more abstracted birch trunk image, will intrigue travelers as they approach it, but only become representational as the ceiling comes into view, suggesting a grand canopy of birch forest reaching into the sky. The scale of all this--both the imagery and the logistics--is pretty overwhelming to me. It's been a long time in the planning and execution, but it's all beginning to come together. Keep checking this site. I'll continue to post images and some brief, personal commentary as the installation nears completion.

 

Canopy - Progress on the Anchorage Airport Mosaics

I've just returned from Munich, Germany, where I spent a week working with the firm that is fabricating the very large mosaics that Anchorage sculptor Sheila Wyne and I are doing for the Anchorage International Airport. (If you missed my introduction to this project, scroll down to the June 27, 2008 posting which describes the commission and includes information on the firm--Franz Mayer of Munich--and images of the proposal.) It was exciting to see the work well underway, with a sizable section of the ceiling image completed, and to talk with the craftsmen there about the ongoing translation from painting to mosaic and a host of technical issues.

Much of my week was spent with Herbert Hahn, one of the two master mosaic craftsmen who worked with us on a sample section when Sheila, Missy, and I went over last spring.  Herbert, on the left in the image above, has created mosaics for the 150 year-old firm for almost 35 years, since 1975.  He has done most of the work on the portion of our mosaic that is currently complete, but will soon be joined full time on the project, he told me, by at least two other craftspersons, and three of them will spend several more months on it before it is complete.  

Herbert is an inspiration to watch at work. He makes it look easy--moving without haste, but steadily and swiftly bringing the image to life. A printed, gridded image of the painting hangs on the wall nearby. A stack of prints of various details is on the table, and a full-scale enlargement of the painting underlies the mesh onto which he sets and glues what will eventually be more more than a million tiny glass tesserae and small, irregular pieces of all kinds of marble. 

Herbert encouraged both Sheila and me to try our hands at working on the mosaic itself, and we each spent about a day and a half completing very small sections.  Sheila has done mosaics before, though none of this sort, and she was slightly more comfortable and a bit faster at it than I, but we both found it much slower and more challenging than Herbert made it look.

It was a good thing for me to experience, as it not only gave me an even better sense of the skill and craftsmanship of those at Mayer of Munich, but helped me realize some ways that the next time I do a painting for translation into this medium, I can make it easier for them.  Over and over, as I selected tesserae by color, shape, and size, splitting or trimming them as necessary, spread small sections of cement on the mesh, and tried to set them cleanly and crisply in place, I thought about how easy it is for me to create a complex shape in paint with the flick of the wrist, and how much more labor intensive it is to translate that shape into bits of glass.

The mosaic itself is astonishingly rich--even more varied in texture, color, and surface than I had expected, while remarkably faithful in overall image to its painted model.  The section they had completed when I arrived, about 6' x 10', was impressive in its scale, and I had to keep reminding myself that this was only a bit more than 1/10 of what will be the completed mosaic. Despite having us there as distractions all week long, Herbert completed another substantial square footage, including the first large areas depicting one of the enormous birch trunks.  The trunks are being done largely in marble--travertine, greenish onyx from Iran, cut and polished pinkish slabs from a Tunisian quarry that supplied material to the Romans, and many more varieties--to contrast with the branches, foliage, and sky.

As I mentioned in my first post about this project, collaboration on works of art with so many people is a new and different experience for me. I am accustomed to toiling alone, in the privacy of my studio. I have completed large public commissions before--one of them, a federal commission for the Pacific Rim Hospital at Elmendorf Air Force Base, involving 4 paintings, each almost 15 feet wide, in two main ground floor lobbies.  It was more than a year of work, but with the exception of some considerable help from my son Eli, the work was done entirely alone. This project seems to me more like a theatrical production--a collaboration of a great many people, in order to bring it to life. I am grateful to be working with Sheila, who has a wealth of experience with these kinds of projects, and who has taken the lead in coordinating the myriad engineering details among us, the studio in Munich, and the Anchorage Airport project managers, architects, and engineers. I'm grateful, as always, to my wife Missy, who helps me keep the ongoing challenges in perspective, and to Sheila's partner Bruce Farnsworth, who continues to provide logistical coordination for our efforts, most recently getting us great flight reservations and tickets to Munich.  And I feel deeply privileged to get to work with the entire staff of Franz Mayer of Munich, who are simply the best in the world at what they do.

And so it grows...piece by tiny piece, day by day and week by week, over months. Late this summer, it will all be shipped to Anchorage in small, irregular-edged sections, and we will get to watch and help Herbert and his colleagues apply some of them to a 9 1/2' tall column, creating an abstracted "birch trunk," and the rest to a 16' by 36' ceiling, creating a Canopy of magical, boreal forest reaching to the sky.

Fresh Air

I spent last weekend in one of my favorite communities, Petersburg, Alaska, conducting a painting workshop for sixteen local artists of varying ages, backgrounds, and experience. Organized by the "Fresh Air" group of plein-air painters in Petersburg, the workshop was to introduce new ideas and methods for painting directly from life in the outdoors.  These are just a few of the participants, posing with their paintings after a final critique at the end of the first full day of the workshop. 

Most of the members of the Fresh Air group, who have painted together for years in all weathers and seasons, participated along with a number of other local artists. It was a wonderful weekend with an extraordinary group of people. I don't know whether I was most impressed by their dedication, talents, enthusiasm, and hospitality, their willingness to try new things, their flexibility in the face of changing weather and my crazy artistic demands, or their mutual support of one another.

As I usually do in these workshops, I talked about and showed images of my work the first evening, meeting them and letting them know who I am and where I'm coming from artistically, explaining that I don't do demonstrations (and think they're evil), and going over the plans for the next two days. On Saturday and Sunday, they painted all day long in two gorgeous settings--Blind Slough and Sandy Beach. I gave them challenging exercises/assignments, and then went from one to another, working with each individually on ways that they could think differently about outdoor painting, get beyond their comfort zones, discover new ways to connect to their familiar surroundings, make images that were more personal, more individual, and more responsive to that day, that place, that weather and light, and what they saw there and felt about it. As I told them over and over, it seems to me that most plein-air painting deals with eyes and hands, and I wanted them to work at least as much with their heads and hearts.

They did. They were so game--artistically and in every other respect. This is an image of Joe Viechnicki, perched and hard at work in the makeshift shelter he constructed from a branch and a tarp in order to paint the stream rapids entering the waters of the Inside Passage by way of Sandy Beach on a cold, rainy, blustery Southeast Alaska summer day. Other members of the group showed the same kind of determination (and good nature--notice the broad smile on Joe's face in truly uncomfortable conditions) as I gave them task after task designed to make sure they tried new things and worked in unexpected, unfamiliar ways.

I taught painting workshops in Petersburg 16 and 18 years ago, and now, as then, I was knocked out by the vigor of the town, the dedication of its artists, and the good will of the community. This year, as before, I stayed with our dear friend Polly Lee, one of Southeast Alaska's best known potters and painters, an early State Arts Council member and arts leader who has been an inspiration to Alaskans on artistic and other fronts for decades. She, some of the painters in this workshop, and many others in the Petersburg arts community are responsible for the growth of a thriving arts council, museum, an amazing amount of public art, and more in this island community of only about 3000 people.

I get at least as much from these experiences as the artists in the workshops I conduct. It is exhausting, as I work with them, talk with them, and explore art and much else with them from the moment I leave my room in the morning until I retire to it at night. But it's also exhilarating and energizing. I came home Monday feeling refreshed and renewed, having made new friends, full of gratitude for the opportunity to have been a part of this group for a few days, and so optimistic about Alaska's art, artists, and community.

You can see much more of the work of the Fresh Air group of Petersburg painters on the website of members Don and Karen Cornelius, at www.corneliusstudio.com. And you might want to check out the work of two other talented Petersburg artists that Polly Lee introduced me to while I was there. Fiber artist Sue Christensen has a great website at www.sjchristensen.com , and you can see some images of work by painter Pia Reilly at www.takugraphics.com/apreilly.html.

Roasting hot dogs for lunch over one of the fires thoughtfully built and tended all day, both days, by Pete Beckett--husband of workshop participant Carol Beckett.

Canopy - Anchorage International Airport Public Art Commission

Canopy Proposal

©2007 Kesler Woodward and Sheila Wyne

I am delighted to share the news that Anchorage sculptor Sheila Wyne and I have been selected to complete a major commission for the Anchorage International Airport. Canopy, which will be located in the two-story clerestory at the junction of the two main concourses in the airport, will consist of a slightly more than 16 1/2' x 36 1/2' mosaic on the angled clerestory ceiling and a 2 1/2' diameter, 10' high mosaic column.

The column, which will take the form of an abstracted birch trunk, will be visible from a distance to most travelers who have passed through security toward gates or are on their way out of the gate areas.  The ceiling, which depicts a view looking up through a birch forest toward the sky, will not be visible until travelers are almost underneath it.  Our vision is that the column will be intriguing from a distance, but might not even be recognized as a birch trunk until travelers walk beneath the clerestory and the image of the forest canopy opens above them.

Canopy study

©Kesler Woodward 2008

Sheila and I have collaborated on the image from the start.  We made a joint proposal because I was excited about the possibilities for using one of my boreal forest images in the dramatic clerestory space, and Sheila has not only produced mosaics for public spaces, but has worked with other painters to translate their work into this medium.  She looked at many examples of my paintings, and it was she who suggested looking more radically up through the forest canopy.  I have continued to work on birch forest paintings, some of which incorporate that idea, and we have been developing our specific design for this project by sending back and forth and modifying digital images via e-mail. It has been very exciting for me to collaborate with Sheila, whose artistic vision is grounded in three-dimensional art, and we've worked toward a model for the mosaic that will incorporate my fascination with painterly surface, and the boreal forest itself, with her facility for enlivening three-dimensional space and challenging the viewer. We're getting close to a collaborative digital image that will serve as a final model. 

In the course of working together over many months, we discovered that there are several outstanding studios that produce mosaics in collaboration with artists from around the world.  In late April, Sheila and Missy and I made a trip to Munich, Germany, to explore the possibility of working with Franz Mayer of Munich (http://www.mayer-of-munich.com) on the project.  We spent a week in their amazing facility in downtown Munich--6 floors, 30,000 square feet of studio space, apartments for artists who are working with them, every conceivable kind of equipment and supplies for mosaics and stained glass, and a large group of master craftspersons who love what they do. We worked with two of those master craftsmen, who over the course of the week produced about a one-meter square mockup of a section of the ceiling image at full scale, exploring with us ways of translating it from painting to mosaic.

Their talents, facilities, experience, and excitement about our project were all extraordinary.  The range of artwork we saw there, in progress or in examples from past projects with major artists around the world, was remarkable.  They are excited, and we are excited to work with them over the coming year, as they produce the mosaics in small glass tesserae, glass cakes, natural stone, and other materials.  We anticipate installation about this time next year.  I will post images and updates on the work in progress during the coming months.  

I am grateful to be working with Sheila, one of Alaska's best known contemporary artists, whose work I have long admired but whom I didn't know well before undertaking this commission. Developing this project has been in every way a partnership, and I have appreciated not only her artistic vision, but her experience with the public art process and her willingness, along with that of her longtime partner Bruce Farnsworth, to undertake so much of the ongoing logistics of the project. And I am grateful for the chance to produce a significant artwork in a striking public space that I will pass through regularly for the rest of my life.  

I am accustomed to working alone in my studio every day, even on large commissions, so this is a very different kind of artmaking experience for me. But I am happy to be involved in this large, collaborative effort, and I think that together we are going to make something wonderful.