Arts

Two Juneau artists spent this snowy Friday framing and mounting 18 block prints that correlate with myths — ones they wrote themselves. 

The prints are a part of a show titled “My Mother’s Bones,” opening Friday at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center.

Rachel Levy said thinking about folktales and their morals inspired the series. 

“Things you wouldn’t even consider mythology, just like certain truths we hear over and over again and all the stories that are told to us growing up,” she said. “And stories we tell each other as adults.”

She wanted to write her own — ones that reflect themes she holds dear: the gifts that our mothers give us, both the ones who birth us and Mother Earth. 

One print shows a heart with a dagger through it. 

“This is about a mom and a daughter who kind of like grow up in this garden together, and the daughter never appreciates life, is never content,” Levy said. “And so the mother decides to slowly cut out her heart and feed it to her daughter piece by piece, so that way she can enjoy life.” 

Levy said it represents her gratitude to her own mother, and the sacrifices she made raising her. 

Alex Bookless was also inspired by her own family for her prints, including the four-legged kind. She pointed to a print of a dog shooting through the darkness with the sun in its teeth. 

“Basically, it’s a story about how much I love my dog,” she said. “And how much I think that loving my dog teaches me how to love myself.” 

That story — and 17 other new folktales — can be found at the JACC Friday from 4 to 7 p.m. The show runs through January. 

Artists have an opportunity to have their bear-themed art work depicted on trash cans in Juneau built to keep the animals out — and win a $10,000 award.

Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings is partnering with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to host an art contest. Selected artists will have their art turned into miniature murals that will be printed on bear-resistant trash infrastructure in downtown Juneau. 

Fish and Game’s Abby McAllister said this is a way to raise awareness about the risks unsecured trash creates for bears and encourage people to throw away their trash properly. 

“How do we get people to use our very resistant cans downtown?” she said. “Well, let’s draw their attention to these cans with art.”

When bears get into trash, they learn to turn to garbage and people for food, which can make them dangerous. The state has to euthanize bears that have become aggressive while looking for food in city streets and neighborhoods.

A press release from Norwegian Cruise Lines said panel will narrow down the entries to three finalists, and then the public will vote on the best via social media. Norwegian will award $10,000 to the person whose entry is chosen, a portion of which will go towards a local charity the artist chooses. 

That design will go on an enclosure of bear-resistant cans near the cruise ship docks. Additional designs will be on new trashcans around downtown in bear hot spots. The City and Borough of Juneau is funding and installing the new canisters using cruise passenger fees allocated in fiscal year 2025. 

McAllister said the current bear-resistant cans in Juneau aren’t user-friendly.

“Not everybody knows how to work it,” she said. “So I see people struggle with it for just a half second, and even that is long enough sometimes to deter folks.”

The new cans have more of a “mailbox” design, she said, where people pull open the canister, drop their trash in, and close it. She hopes that the new infrastructure will prevent more bears from getting into trash and save bear lives. 

Submissions are open today, Dec. 9, through Feb. 13.

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Normally, this time of year, Juneau’s largest craft store would be full of plastic pumpkins, skeletons, ghosts, and, of course, fabric. But instead, the former Joann store in the Nugget Mall sits dark and empty — a spooky reality, say local costume makers.

Months after the chain closed across the nation, the gap in craft supplies is being put to the test at a crucially creative time of year: Halloween.

Elizabeth Bauer makes her five-year-old daughter’s Halloween costume every year, and usually, she wants to be something a bit unusual.

“Last year, she knew for months she wanted to be a white bat,” Bauer said. “So it’s like, you can’t find a white bat costume anywhere.” 

Bauer found white furry fabric at Joann, and made wings and a headband with bat ears for her daughter. 

But this year, Bauer is scrambling to find the material she needs to make another unusual costume, a hybrid jaguar and parrot from her daughter’s favorite cartoon, “Elena of Avalor.” She needs to make a pink base outfit, leopard spots, wings and a tail. And she has to find all of the materials and finish sewing by Friday. 

“But there’s not one store that you can go to and get all of those items that you’re looking for for a craft project,” she said. “You have to piece it together between all these different places.” 

Meanwhile, in Maggie Hyde’s costume closet, she held up a blue and green dress with scalloped ribbons of different colors. The shade of the fabric she bought online is not quite right. 

“I made it work, but these two shades were supposed to be a lot more different,” Hyde said. “They were not supposed to be the same shade, but on a website, they looked very different to what they look like in person.”

Hyde is a costumer. She participates in Juneau’s annual Wearable Arts show — where creators show off costumes they’ve made themselves — and she designs outfits for renaissance fairs, cosplay photoshoots and, of course, Halloween.

She said it’s a gamble to buy materials online for her creations. And she doesn’t want to support online retailers that don’t treat their employees well and often sell lower quality materials. Shipping costs are often high, if a company even ships to Alaska. 

“Now it’s this whole process of shipping, of looking and that just makes it a lot more difficult,” Hyde said. “You kind of have to adapt.”

Juneau Drag Mother Gigi Monroe said she and her fellow drag performers have been doing just that. 

“For professionals, we know how to get what we need and figure things out,” she said.

But this year, she had to pivot from a costume idea for Juneau Drag’s Halloween show because she couldn’t find more niche materials anywhere. Monroe said Joann usually had that kind of thing. 

And she said the store’s closing also impacts her methods. She would often go to the store with parts of an idea in mind, and figure out the rest based on what fabric she could touch and see in person. 

“So there’s a lot of designing that actually happens in the store, and you don’t really always have to go in knowing exactly what you need,” Monroe said. 

When they first heard the bad news, Monroe and other performers went to Joann’s closing sales and stockpiled on some heavy-hitter supplies — like rhinestone glue.

Monroe said other stores in town — including Juneau’s two quilting shops — help fill some of the gaps. 

And for Juneau’s more casual costumers, there are still options. Kathy Buell is owner of local party store Balloons by Night Moods.

“Halloween is our busiest season for anything that is not balloon-related,” she said.

The store’s shelves are stocked with ready-made costumes that fit infants, kids and as many sizes for adults Buell can find. It also has pieces that can be added to home-grown costumes. 

“We have makeup, we have wigs, we have hats,” she said. “Prosthetics that you put on with latex, blood, lots of blood.”

There is still a lot left for holiday procrastinators, she said. 

“We still have a lot of stock, because honestly, I’ve already—and it’s not even Halloween yet—I’m already buying for next year,” Buell said.

Still, the hole left by the Joann closure is a hard one to fill. But Monroe said there’s a letter-writing campaign asking national craft chain Michaels to step in. 

Kristen Ford, queer singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, kicked off her North American tour for her latest album “Pinto” at the Crystal Saloon on August 30. Delivering a blend of indie rock and folk, the show was the first in her eight-stop tour spanning Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California.

Originally inspired by acts like Ani DeFranco and Blink-182, Ford picked up the guitar at 14 and has been crafting her own genre since.

In an interview with KXLL ahead of her show, Ford described her work.

“It is really freeing to be a solo artist. I do live looping, and a lot of different effects pedals to layer harmonies and guitar effects,” Ford said. “I don’t want to be one of those people that say ‘You can’t define my music,’ but I just like music.”

? Listen back to the full conversation below.

The Trump Administration has started canceling federal grants that fund arts and culture programs across the country, including here in Juneau. 

The cuts involve millions of dollars in grant funding doled out through the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The president has also proposed eliminating the agencies altogether in his 2026 Discretionary Budget Request.

Among those affected locally are Perseverance Theater, Juneau Jazz and Classics, Sealaska Heritage Institute and the proposed Capital Civic Center in downtown Juneau. 

Frank Delaney, Perseverance’s managing director, said the theatre was among the hundreds of other art groups across the country that received an email from the NEA on Friday notifying them that their grants had been terminated. 

He called the Trump Administration’s actions short-sighted.

“They are misguided in what they think they are achieving,” he said. “I think that if the NEA does go away, America will be much worse off than it was with that program in place.”

Delaney said the email targeted a grant that had already been spent, and it’s unclear if the theatre will have to repay that money. He said the broader implications of the cuts and program terminations will have a chilling effect on the local arts community.

The nonprofit that is backing the proposed Capital Civic Center says the project has also taken a financial blow. The long-proposed convention and arts facility in downtown Juneau is meant to replace the existing Juneau Arts and Culture Center. 

Bob Banghart, executive director of the nonprofit, said he received notice that the National Endowment for the Humanities canceled a $750,000 grant for the project a few weeks ago. 

He said, despite the news, he remains optimistic. 

“With the inexperience and incompetence demonstrated by this administration, we’re kind of hoping that things will flip again, because they flipped everybody else around,” he said. 

The center is estimated to cost up to $60 million. Banghart said the grant cancellation won’t stop the project from moving forward, but they’ll still have to find that money somewhere else. 

Sealaska Heritage Institute also confirmed the cancellation of grant funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. A representative for the Juneau Arts and Humanities Council, Phil Huebschen, said they don’t yet know what losses the nonprofit could face from the grant cancellations.

Huebschen announced their resignation Monday.

This post has been updated. 

Sealaska Heritage Institute is seeking Alaska Native artists to pitch designs for Celebration – the every-other-year gathering of Indigenous people in Southeast Alaska. The multi-day event takes place June 5 through 8.

SHI President Kaaháni Rosita Worl says this year’s theme is “Together we live in balance,” and designs should depict that using Northwest Coast style art. The winning design will appear on all Celebration materials, including t-shirts and the event program.

Worl said creating a balance between the different Southeast Alaska Native people in the region is essential to maintaining lasting relationships for future generations. 

“The whole concept of social and spiritual balance is a basic underlying theme or value in our culture,” she said. “We need to have both social and spiritual balance to maintain a healthy society.” 

Worl said balance is an important belief in Lingít culture that goes back thousands of years. An example of that can be seen with the Lingít moieties of Raven and Eagle. She said even today, it’s essential that a balance is struck between the moieties during gatherings. 

“When we have someone from a Raven clan speak, we have to have balance and so an Eagle has to respond,” Worl said. “If we don’t do that, our belief is that, you know, the spirits can go wandering, and cause harm. 

Worl said SHI is asking artists to encapsulate that balance not only between Alaska Native peoples but also in the natural world around Juneau. The sketches of proposed concepts are due Jan. 12 and artists can apply online. The winning artist will receive a cash award.