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More than 30 artists, children and crafters got together this past weekend for an open studio gathering at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center. 

It was the second monthly Artists of All Nations event put together by the Juneau Arts and Humanities Council.

The Artists of All Nations events are a result of the JAHC’s Diversity and Inclusion Task Force, which responded to Alaska Native artists’ desire to create art as a collective experience.

“Most of the Native artists that I know, including myself, work in community,” says program facilitator and JAHC and KTOO board member Debra O’Gara. “We’re trying to set up just a community space where people can come in, work on their projects, but also view what other people are doing and get ideas and inspiration for not just for your project, that you’re working on, but also give inspiration and ideas to somebody else.”

Open to all artists and mediums, activity included both Raven’s Tail and Chilkat weaving, beadwork, carving, needle point, painting, coloring and mixed media.

Juneau artist and University of Alaska Southeast professor Abel Ryan worked on a bas relief carved plaque, which is part of a commission with two rings that feature a of formline whale design.

Ryan said the art form is at least 1,000 years old, “It’s a lot of fun to learn how to do and it’s easy to get lost when composing the designs.”

Juneau painter and 2017 JAHC juried art show “Best In Show” winner Pua Mauna worked with water color and pen and ink at her first Artists of All Nations.

“It’s a great space and I love meeting all the artists here and seeing what they’re doing,” Maunu said. “It’s very inspirational.

Juneau artist Alfie Price sewed patches to his “Rock and Roll Battle Vests.” Made from old jean jackets, his designs are adorned with patches from favorite bands, political statements or personal messages that represent the wearer.

Price usually sources his denim on eBay or hunts for them at local thrift stores.

He said the older the better, “If they’re kind of worn in they look a lot cooler, and they’re more comfortable.

The next Artists of All Nations gathering takes place Sunday, Oct. 22 at the JACC.

Kindred Post, a post office, gift shop and gathering space in downtown Juneau, has selected 10 art submissions to print on 1,000 postcards. The selections are from around the state, and from a diversity of artists.

It does not take long to realize Kindred Post is a little different from the average post office. The store’s sidewalk sandwich board reads: stamps, boxes, shipping services, handmade and Alaskan made gifts and good vibes. An image of a woman wearing an American flag hijab that reads “We The People” is in the storefront, and just inside is a hoodie that reads “Social Justice Hustle.”

“So when we first started Kindred Post I’d had this dream to fill it with local art,” said artist and writer Christy Namee Eriksen has owned the business for 3 years.

Beyond post officey stuff, it’s known for selling artful jewelry, happening First Friday art gatherings and “Tiny Post Office” concerts. Still,

“People come here every day to buy postcard stamps and they’re always looking for postcards,” said Eriksen.

Eriksen had already tapped some of Juneau’s usual suspects for art, so a contest seemed in order. Two hundred and fifty submissions came in between July and August.

Among the 10 winners is Tom Chung, who teaches art at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

“The image is of myself riding shirtless on this moose in front of the backdrop of an Alaskan wilderness,” Chung said.

“I don’t see representations very often of Asian males, and so I use myself because it’s a little bit of an act of rebelling and I guess that I believe I live in a culture that says I am not desirable or not beautiful, and so I place myself in these sort of images of desirability or masculinity to kind of rebel against that,” said Chung.

Crystal Worl is a Juneau-based mixed media artist and business owner that works in paint and fashion design. Her piece, “White Raven,” is also among the winners.

“I like to acknowledge my Tlingit side using formline, and then I also like to acknowledge my Athabascan side through putting beadwork, floral patterns in my paintings,” said Worl.

“This one has a seaweed pattern that looks like a growing stem. …. There’s a moon below Raven. You get the feeling that you’re looking up into the sky at Raven, and this is coming down and it feels also like you’re under water,” said Worl.

Additional winning images include a humpback whale in watercolor, a fox under the aurora, an image of a hand-embroidered umbrella. Some of the winning artists’ names are recognizable, some not — including Zoey Lam’s marker drawing of a large green dinosaur-like beast sort of hugging the Kindred Post store.

Having a diversity of artists is important to store owner Eriksen who studied social justice in college and co-founded a poetry slam in Juneau that is known for inclusiveness and empowering voice.

“I had a equity clause built into the competition. So we wanted to prioritize artists who have otherwise have had social marginalization, and maybe not have had as much access to artistic opportunities as others,” said Eriksen.

Eriksen, her staff and other community members judged.

“So we would give preference to artists who self-identified as either a woman, LGBTQ, a person of color, or an indigenous person, artists who are experiencing a developmental disability, or just a disability,” said Eriksen.

“I thought that was really great, I noticed that,” said Chung. “And we were allowed to write a little comment with our submission and I wrote I am a gay person of color that also lives with a disability. And it’s not just I guess to give a leg up to people that might need a little more encouraging, but also being inclusive to all sorts of diversity it expands the range of viewpoints that can be shared.”

I asked Eriksen why social justice and equity are important, and a part of her business.

“Our success is tied to the success of our neighborhood, of our city, of our community,” Eriksen said. “And so if you have that type of commitment to the place or the people that you belong to, then the question for me would be why would you not be committed to social justice? Why would you not want to raise up and work towards equality for all of its members?”

One thousand of the printed cards will be released at Kindred Post on Oct. 1.

A satirical play with a megalomaniac title character who talks about himself in the third person opens this Friday at Perseverance Theatre.

While “The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity” takes place in a professional wrestling ring, the men in tiny tight outfits explore ethnic politics, celebrity and American culture.

A professional wrestling ring may not be where one expects to find fine art that deals with issues like these.

But, according to play director Shona Osterhout, they’re complementary.

“Wrestling is, and I am going to air quote this and I’m not trying to spoil anything, it’s fake, right? It’s make believe. It’s theater,” Osterhaut said. “Then you have a play — a piece of theater — on top of a piece of theater. Then you have these layers of what I like to call masks, right? You get to peel all of these layers back and see actually what the real story is.”

In an interview with the Actors Theatre of Louisville, playwright Kristoffer Diaz described the main character, Mace, as a Puerto Rican pro-wrestler from the Bronx.

“Who is really good at the wrestling, part of professional wrestling, and he comes to find out that the wrestling part is a very small part of it,” Diaz said. The part of interacting with an audience, being charismatic — those are the big factors for somebody’s success.”

In Juneau, Enrique Bravo plays Mace.

His counterpart, superstar wrestler Chad Deity, is played by San Diego-based actor Vamel Sephus.

“Chad is the face of the league,” Sephus said. “He’s The Rock, your Hulk Hogan, your Stone Cold Steve Austin. Anyone of those guys who you think of as the champ — he is the champ.”

To exemplify the part, Sephus spoke in his character’s voice.

“Chad Deity was hanging out with his boy, Derek Jeter, the other day,” Sephus said in character as Deity. “Chad Deity’s boy, Derek Jeter, turned to Chad Deity and said, ‘Chad Deity, you’re the champion and the ladies’ man and the media icon I’ve always wanted to be.’ And Chad Deity turned to his boy Derek Jeter and said, ‘Chad Deity knows Derek Jeter. Chad Deity knows.’”

Beyond examining a megalomaniac who talks about himself in the third person, playwright Diaz, who was raised in the Bronx and is of Puerto Rican decent, points out additional themes.

“It’s also about racial politics, ethnic politics, America, celebrity, opulence, money, all that kind of good stuff,” said Diaz in an interview with the Dallas Theater Center.

And the set at Perseverance Theatre?

“It’s a 65,000-seat stadium with a huge ring,” Sephus said.

“As an audience member you are invited to participate. We want it,” Osterhout added. “This is a play where you want to get involved because it’s just going to be more fun for you — it’s going to land fun for you. You’re coming to a wrestling match, and a play happens.”

“Scream, yell. Cheer on the champ, boo for the bad guy,” Sephus said.

“The Bad Guy” is played by Richard Jay Carter. Additional cast include Tom Robenolt at Everett K. Olson, and Jacob Athyal as Vigneshwar Paduar.

Perseverance Theatre’s production of “The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity” opens 7:30 p.m. Friday.

There are also pay-as-you-can previews 7:30 tonight and Thursday. The play runs through October 7.

“Lineage: Tlingit Art Across Generations” premieres Tuesday night on 360 North. The 1-hour documentary film is a collaboration between KTOO Public Media, 360 North public television and Tlingit poet and storyteller Ishmael Hope.

The documentary explores the artistic lineage of many Tlingit culture bearers, including weavers, carvers, bead artists, musicians and more.

“What was important to me was a multi-generational revelation of how the spirit of Tlingit art gets fostered, how it continues, how it gets reincarnated,” said Hope, who I co-directed with.

One of our first shoots was with culture bearer and carver Paul Marks.

“When we dance it does something to our spirit. It makes us feel good. And to wear our ancestral at.óow brings us strength and pride in our people, of our ancestors,” said Marks.

To see the art in action, Hope organized a Khu.eex’, or potlatch, in Sitka.

“What I love the most is when we are seeing the people in the regalia, in their at.óow, their Chilkat blankets, and the clan hats, those heavy important clan hats, their dancing in that. The culture is fully alive and everyone in that room feels it,” said Hope.

In Sitka, we filmed master weaver Teri Rofkar in her studio. Rofkar passed shortly after our visit and the scenes in the documentary are her last footage.

At one point in the documentary Rofkar points to a robe and a basket in her studio.

“The mountain goat and this spruce roots. You know, this was cutting edge science 6,000 years ago. And so for today, what are we doing? If I want Tlingit methodology, if I want our weaving to be relevant 6,000 years from now, how am I going to make that possible? It’s very obvious now that I’m the one passing through the weaving, not the weaving in me,” Rofkar said.

Fellow master weaver, Clarissa Rizal, also passed after our time with her. Beyond footage of her working with her daughter, Lily Hope, she left us with knowledge like this.

“This is a spiritual practice for women. When you raise up the spiritual practice of a woman, you raise up the level of harmonious existence,” Rizal said.

We also spoke with multi-disciplinary artists, brothers Nick and Jerrod Galanin as they carved a canoe in Sitka. They’re the grandchildren of master carver George Benson.

“Working on this canoe, by making artwork, and studying that, and diving into that, actively engaging it, has become the best way to feel some ownership towards it. And I guess, belonging to it,” Jerrod said.

Jerrod’s brother Nick, and his music project Silver Jackson, provided the documentary’s music. Songs like this one called “Perfect Mistake.”

If Hope regrets anything with the film, it’s that we didn’t cover more artists.

“This is a sampling and hopefully it has enough range to reveal some of this vision and these questions we were going for regarding the generations, regarding the spirit and character of the art,” Hope said.

“Lineage: Tlingit Art Across Generations” premieres at 8 p.m. Tuesday on 360 North. Visit 360North.org/Lineage for more information and to watch the documentary on demand. Funding for the documentary was provided by the Alaska Humanities Forum.

Correction: In an earlier version of this story, the photo caption for Paul Marks misidentified his clan. He is a member of the Lukaaxh.ádi, clan, not the L’uknaxh.ádi. 

Story night at the Douglas Public Library played out like any other monthly family night: free food, some crafts, and a very special guest reading books. More than 100 adults, teenagers and children attended Juneau’s first Drag Queen Story Hour hosted by Gigi Monroe of Juneau. 

She introduces herself to the kids, and explains, “I’m a drag queen, and if you’ve never met a drag queen, this is what we look like. We like to play dress up and make people happy.”

The buxom Gigi Monroe is the creation of James Hoagland, a professional wig designer and producer of Juneau Pride’s sold out drag revue, Glitz. Covered in ruffles, rhinestones and glitter, some of the kids listening from the floor thought the drag queen reading childhood classics might have been royalty.

She’s known for her bedazzled costumes, lively impersonations of Dolly Parton and Liza Minelli among others, and even pyrotechnics.

But at the library, “It’s definitely more G-rated than what I usually do at a show,” Hoagland said.

He said the experience provides youth with a real life example of self-expression, so they may feel freer to express themselves.

The idea to bring drag queens to Juneau’s youth came from the Brooklyn Public Library whose Drag Queen Story Hour “captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity in childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models.” 

Heather Paige Burke saw a video from Brooklyn and asked her friend at the Juneau Public Library if it could happen here. Burke, who brought her husband and 2-year-old son, said Juneau celebrates many cultures, but others are lacking in visibility.

“So it’s great to have literally all colors of the rainbows. And as much as we can expose our children to that, the better,” Burke said. “Like, then you can see, anyone can be anything their heart tells them they should be and who they truly are.”

Amelia Jenkins, who works in youth services for the library, said there were a few raised eyebrows when they announced the event.

“We just let them know that the library is for everybody and families can decide for themselves whether this was right for them,” she said. “And they took that pretty well.” 

So far, there have been no formal complaints.

It took Hoagland about an hour-and-a-half to get ready for Drag Story Hour, about the same amount of time he spends preparing for the stage. He said drag, like other performance arts, is just trying to connect with people. In this case, very young people, and letting them know whoever they are is OK. No matter the audience, Hoagland’s goal is for them to let go and just have fun.

Family Night is funded through The Friends of the Juneau Public Libraries who pay for all programming expenses.

Remember those Red Carpet Concert videos from folk fest we’ve been releasing over the last couple weeks? Well, it turns out there was one more video. After a cancellation, the production team had an extra slot to fill and our very own Annie Bartholomew happened to have her guitar with her. Here’s a bonus from the session, Annie Bartholomew with her song “Mister Thomas.”

Watch this and other Red Carpet Concerts with The Murphy Beds, Goldwing and more here at KTOO.org.