Public Artworks
Ocean View Elementary School, Anchorage, Alaska
“An Otters play is never Done” in Anchorage Alaska’s Oceanview Elementary School is an intertidal sealife relief. It is Seven feet wide by three foot six inches high. It is mounted in the entryway of the school, low enough that the younger students can easily view and tactilely explore the art. Down the adjoining Kindergarten Hall are four medallions. The medallions are eighteen inches in diameter and offer different marine environments.
Sitka High School Commons
Dance of the Red Salmon is installed in the entry of Sitka High School. It is six feet wide by six feet high. This ceramic relief is based on the universal swimming patterns of red salmon as they dig reds and spawn. The relief also includes the full environment of a spawning bed; aquatic insects, other species of fish and bird life.
William Jack Hernandez Sportfish Hatchery in Anchorage Alaska
First swim shows the fry as they swim with instinctive patterns to the bottom of the new rearing tank.
The round art work panels shown here are 38 inches in diameter.
W J H Sportfish Hatchery contains all the salmon rearing within a five acre warehouse. My art shares the life of the fish within the hatchery from egg to stocking. In observing, I realized the fry, fingerlings and smolts have a very round and piped life in the hatchery. The art panels reflect that shape. The eggs, collected in round buckets and fertilized, then the fry are placed from rearing pens into the round tank for their first swim. They are observed through the windows of the tanks, and pumped to tanks or trucks.
The swirl of the fish pump above shows the fish being pumped backwards to a new location. That new location might be into a pond as they fall with the water to their new life.
Kodiak’s Near Island Research Facility, The Early Bear gets the Seal
Granddaughter Adalyn visiting the Early Bear
Dena’ina School
Stories are told of the Dena’ina fishing from built platforms in Cook inlet. There seem to be no photographs from that time of them fishing. In “Stance” (6 ft wide), the artist reconstructed the visual image passed on through those stories, showing the hands and feet of the brave Dena’ina using the offshore platform in Cook Inlet’s 20 foot tides to net Salmon. Below a Loon glides under the boats Bow, fishing for lunch in a clear valley lake. And a Dena’ina “Whitefish Trap”, (6 ft wide) catchs some spring whitfish for some of the Dena’ina’s first fresh protien of the year.
