Anchorage By Winter from Zan Butler on Vimeo.
You don’t have to be in the middle of nowhere to find solitude.
[by Lisa Maloney]
Two Alaska Native artists bring new color to the Anchorage streetscape This summer, Anchorage visitors can seek out two new public murals created by forerunners in Alaska Native art. The first is located on G Street on the east side of the RIM Architecture building and was painted by Crystal Worl, a Tlingit, Athabaskan, Yup’ik, and Filipino artist based in Juneau. Worl has emerged as a prominent Alaskan artist whose work is featured in public spaces in Juneau and has appeared as a Doodle on Google’s homepage. Her new mural, completed in August 2022, honors several Alaska Native groups and highlights Anchorage as a cultural gathering place. The second mural graces the The Kobuk building on the corner of 5th Avenue and E Street. Painted by Yup’ik and Inupiaq artist Drew Michael, its vivid colors recreate a mask he carved in 2019 and celebrate the rich cultural traditions of the…
High Drama When the River Runs Again by Beth Grassi In late April 2014, I stood on a bridge in Fairbanks watching the Chena River waking up under my feet. Flat chunks of ice bumped and bobbed down the river, some a thin, translucent gray, others rafts of white several inches thick. Ice floes and slush hissed through the rush of river water. It felt like standing on the prow of a ship, pushing through to spring. “Spring breakup” may sound like a sitcom episode, but in Alaska it’s a landscape-size drama. Most of Alaska’s rivers freeze over in winter, with ice up to several feet thick. When the rivers finally break free, usually in April and May (or even June in the Arctic), ice floats downstream. Sometimes ice jams—jumbles of ice floes—dam up a river. Large ice jams can cause dangerous flooding. Breakup plays out differently each year on…
Advanced Lessons on the High Seas by Scout Edmondson It’s 2 a.m., dark and windy. F/V Epick bobs along in tumultuous gray water near the beach, while I sit on a buoy in the corner of the port side stern with tears streaming down my face. Just moments before, the towline connecting the net to the Epick’s mast got caught on something along the railing, sprang loose, grabbed my head, and smashed my face against the thick aluminum stern roller. My baseball cap, caked in sea salt and fish slime, flew off my head and over the stern and floated away in the dark. I’m crying because my head hurts, but also because I’m a scared, sleep-deprived 18-year-old in a harsh, dangerous place. My captain, fellow deckhand, and I are on set in the Nushagak district of Bristol Bay, trying to catch enough sockeye salmon to stay on quota for…
