I've lived in Alaska for 17 years, but I'd never been to Nome. With distances as vast as this state's, I haven't been many places, but hope to change that. First off, props to my husband's architecture firm who completed the Richard Foster Building in Nome last year. It houses the Carrie McLain Memorial Museum, the Kegoayah Kozga Public Library and the Katirvik Cultural Center -- three entities with individual histories and voices that united to create a space of beauty and heritage. We came to attend the grand re-opening, now that all the museum exhibits are fully installed. 

Maybe Nome sounds familiar, but you aren't sure why. If I explain it's the official finish line to the 1,000-mile long  Iditarod sled dog race, this might jog your memory of its recent history, but the area's deeper culture spans thousands of years. If you study the map below, it begins to build a picture of Alaska that most people don't fully understand. What I've seen on some language maps referred to as "Eskimo" doesn't exist on this one. And what might seem like an empty, stark landscape is full of culture and tradition that resonates in the various arts practiced by its inhabitants, native and non native.

The work of Alaskan artist, Sonja Kelliher-Combs, hangs prominently in the Katirvik Cultural Center's entryway, with additional work in the gathering room. Sonja grew up in Nome, but is now based in Anchorage. Her work is immediately identifiable and much desired; I feel even more of a pull to it now that I've been to the landscape of her childhood. (Please visit her website and body of work. Hers was some of the first Alaskan art I encountered 17 years ago at the Decker/Morris Gallery when I moved to Anchorage from Vancouver, Canada, and thought, "Hang on, this place might be ok").

Her work still punches me in the gut.

I was so honored to bring my children to Nome, even if it was for a short time. I'm honored they have the privilege of growing up in Alaska, honored we get to live and work here, inspired by land, culture and an extreme, changing climate.

Children who come from this place will be forced to solve problems we can't yet imagine. Crossing cultural divides with grace and empathy is a major piece of their future. Understanding consequences is another. Taking risks is another part of the equation.

Ice. (Because, Alaska).

Splitting open the idea. (The brave seed to the Inheritance Project, which I continue to generate work for, and therefore blog less).

A history of chaos. (And here's where I'll reveal my own #metoo, although the extent isn't divulged in this post, and feel I'll never do more than dance around what still has very little clarity for me. I understand so much about women's silence, and am grateful I had the choice and resources -- emotional and otherwise -- to simply slip away).

At the end of September I had the rare opportunity to travel to Boston. While my husband attended meetings for 2 1/2 days, I gave myself the gift of much needed alone time, like a 6-hour date with myself at the Museum of Fine Arts, another date with myself at the Institute of Contemporary Art, and a good hard wander through the gallery at the Society of Arts and Crafts. Did I mention we flew a grandma to Alaska to be with children so this could happen? So many moving parts. So hard to get away.

But the highlight of the trip was driving to Lowell on Saturday morning with the Director of the New England Quilt Museum, Nora Burchfield, to visit their current exhibition "Gilding the Lily: Embroidery in Quilts Past & Present." I was invited to exhibit 8 works for this show in my own "pocket" gallery. In the image below, you can see "Reliquary #8: Scroll through the entryway.

This exhibition will be installed until December 30, 2017. It's beautiful.

It was an incredible honor to be surrounded by 200 years of embroidered quilts in a city known for its long textile history, and have the prestige of representing a facet of this art form's contemporary turn. Work from both the Reliquary and Girl Story series are on display. 

I didn't photograph everything in the exhibition, but below are a few broad strokes encompassing historic and contemporary work. 

I recommend a good hard wander if you're out that way. You, too, might have a whole new shiny outlook.
​

I also had the opportunity to talk about my work while Caroline Gallagher created a video of this. I haven't seen it yet, but will link to when it's on You Tube. 

​Thank you Caroline and Nora for coordinating the effort.
​

Above is a rare reverse view of the suspended work, "Inheritance," featuring doilies used as "batting" between two layers of silk organza. The "quilting" is done with crewel embroidery wool and a darning stitch.

But enough about my work.

Also, this happened: I ran into fellow Alaskan artist, Beth Blankenship, who happened to be in the museum on the same day, while visiting her daughter in Boston. Must've been the magnetic north pulling us toward one another, even when far from home.

This Inheritance Project gratitude post is overdue; three of these “boxes of mystery” came over the summer and now we’re hurtling towards the equinox. But. Each contributor already received a thank you card and a handmade gift…I think I’m up to 70 of those teeny tiny doilies…so this post is the bigger thank you I share with the world.

​First, here’s a little update: I stopped officially accepting items for the Inheritance Project a year ago, after 13 months of receiving crowd-sourced domestic linens from people all over the world  (except this didn’t mean shipments stopped coming). I’ve been working steadily all this time and so many incredible opportunities have arisen from this project’s raw material:

• work accepted into Quilt National 2017
• a Rasmuson Foundation Individual Artist Award Project Grant
• a Sustainable Arts Foundation Grant
• a pop-up studio a few months ago and a forthcoming solo exhibition at the Anchorage Museum (May – Sept. 2018)
• another at the new Alaska State Museum in Juneau (Dec. 2017 – Feb. 2018)
• a series of workshops at the Anchorage Museum this fall and winter (more on that to come)
• and most importantly, incredible connections, correspondence and friendships with contributors and interested people from all over the world.

 
For those of us who work with cloth, and older cloth in particular, the pull is powerful. It's no surprise we somehow find each other.

​Thank you Ina Braun from Tante Sophie et Cie in Denville, New Jersey, for the lovely box of mystery. Like many of us, Ina has been hanging onto these items for a long time – some she made, some she found, some belonged to various women in her life.

​Anchorage doesn't launch big fireworks displays for July 4th celebrations – it’s too light at night, too close to Solstice (I know, that’s a crazy thing), and our family is usually in Prince William Sound so I haven’t been to a July 4th house party in years. (We do stand in snowbanks to watch fireworks through steamy breath on New Year’s Eve and again for the annual winter Fur Rendezvous though, and last year the northern lights totally out-performed the explosions one night, so there’s a little more Alaska craziness for you). This summer, we did make it to our friends, the Kingry’s, who brew incredible beer and throw a sweet summer gathering, complete with screaming kids, sparklers in broad daylight and out of control garden hoses. It’s the kind of party where, when another friend slips you a handful of doilies from a neighbor who was about to toss them and it feels a little like a drug deal, no one really notices.
​

Nope. I can’t tell you where these incredible quilts came from. I also can’t tell you who made them, or when. All I can say here is thank you. Thank you for thinking of me. Thank you for taking the time to ship these all the way to Alaska. Thank you for seeing something in my body of work, and I hope we can continue the conversation.

​Thank you Marcia Cohen, for contacting me out of the blue after reading the interview I did with Alex Teplitzky for the Creative Capital blog, for requesting long distance Alaskan summer travel advice, for agreeing to meet me at the Anchorage Museum between your epic trips to Denali and Prince William Sound, for sharing fabulous stories and for this gorgeous embroidered handkerchief featuring the teeniest embroidery stitches I’ve ever seen. Marcia is an artist and part of September’s group show here in Anchorage at the International Gallery of Contemporary Art. She is also a professor of Foundation Studies at the Savannah College of Art and Design. 

In an hour and a half, we talked about everyone from Kara Walker to Radcliffe Bailey to Sharon Louden to Rudolf Steiner. It was a 6-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon conversation and one I wish could have continued for another 8 hours. When I get down to Atlanta some day, I’m looking you up, lady.
​

​
​For a complete list of ALL the boxes of mystery, click here. I’m in the process of distilling quotes from several years’ worth of correspondence…if you were a Contributor, I may be contacting you to get your permission to use your words in some capacity. (Remaining anonymous is ok). To experience all the voices in a single stream is incredible.
​

​Robin, the bride, was referred by a friend in a I-think-you’re-maybe-the-only-one-who-can-take-this-on kind of way. The bride’s mother wore the dress in the ’80’s, but someone had worn it before. There is mystery around the provenance — maybe it came from an antique store, maybe from an aunt — but the bride’s mother isn’t here to tell the full story, which is why Robin wanted to wear the dress, the closest she could be to her mother on the day she married her partner, Jess.

​The sheer cotton batiste and eyelet lace dress had been home made, perhaps in rural Indiana, with stitches so small I couldn’t get the tip of my seam ripper beneath, with areas so fragile they blew apart in my hands. I saw the dress in February, before it was sent away for cleaning and restoration* — it was yellowed, stained and had been suspended on a wire hanger for decades, partially covered in plastic.

I worked with the dress after it returned to Alaska from a cleaner in California. According to the bride, the professionals began with dry cleaning, then a wet cleaning process with Orvus paste, then a gentle bleach soak over several days, checking at critical points to ensure the fibers weren’t stretching or tearing. The transformation was stunning, but it took time.

My part of the project required properly fitting the dress, textile stabilization and updated finishing. Gathers at the waist became pleats. Metal hooks and eyes at the center back became hand made loops and silk covered buttons. I replaced the skirt lining. I repaired areas of stretched or ripped lace by hand. I trimmed away excess. I steamed, I pressed, and thought about the woman who first made this dress, the women who had worn it since, the woman who would wear it again. Connected, I became another link in a line of of makers and women crossing thresholds.

​And this is the difference between working on wedding gowns in your 20’s as a seamstress/sewer/pattern maker/shopgirl/designer/assistant/or whatever else I was referred to, and working on a wedding gown as a mid-40’s artist and mother. My energy and intent had nothing to do with proving myself, and everything to do with respect, curiosity and creating the most supportive, most nurturing experience I could for another woman — for 2 women, actually — during a life moment when the experience should be beautiful and easy for a couple, but often feels overwhelming.
​
It’s also the difference between choosing to work with a vintage gown or making all new. Old cloth holds stories, secrets. It’s always my preference.

During the process, I was able to share discoveries about Robin’s mother -- she had a 24-inch waist when she got married, and had likely been losing weight since the seams at the hip had been taken in 3 times…the final time by hand, maybe stitched at the last minute, maybe the morning of the wedding. These are small things, small curiosities. But I wanted Robin to know that part of the story. ​

The rest of the dance belongs to her and Jess.

If you are interested in having a vintage wedding gown cleaned and/or restored, here are some resources:

National Gown — www.nationalgown.com

American Institute for Conservation -- www.conservation-us.org
See pdf:  "Guide to Caring for Your Treasures" 

List of Conservators (this list was originally provided by the Anchorage Museum, although they don't endorse anyone in particular. Refer to the above website to find a conservator near you):
​

• Margaret Geiss-Mooney, Petaluma, CA, (tel) 707-763-8694, (email) meg@textileconservator.com
• Denise Krieger Migdail, San Francisco, CA, (415) 931-1085, (email) dmigdail@asianart.org
• Yadin Larochette, Santa Monica, CA, (tel) 310-808-7979, (email) yadinl@gmail.com
• Susan Schmalz, Los Angeles, CA, (tel) 323-857-6169, (email) sschmalz@lacma.org​
• Cara Varnell, Long Beach, CA, (tel) 562-209-1039, (email) carav@earthlink.net
• Nancy Wyatt, Tacoma, WA, (tel) 253-572-5863, (email) ncwyatt@aol.com​

Don’t:

• store in plastic or “sealed” boxes from the dry cleaner
• store hanging on a hangar
• store in a cedar chest or against wood of any kind without some kind of barrier. Wood is acidic.

Do:

• have the dress professionally cleaned before storing, even if it appears clean. Body oil, lotions, perfumes and perspiration will emerge as yellow stains over time. 
• fill the bodice and sleeves with acid-free tissue paper and gently fold the skirt around more tissue, resulting in a loose bundle. *Amendment: Margaret Geiss-Mooney, one of the conservators listed above, contacted me with this advice: "Use fabric/yardage/sheets to stuff out sleeves and bodice (don’t use paper tissue as the tissue becomes acidic over time and, in the event of a disaster involving water, becomes paper pulp which is very difficult to remove) ... The fabric used to stuff out sleeves/bodice can also be re-used by just rinsing in the washing machine."  Thank you Margaret!
• wrap the bundle in clean sheets or unbleached muslin and store in a lignin-free box, off the floor or away from possible leaking pipes or dusty ventilation ducts.
• unwrap the dress once a year and re-position the folds before storing again. (okay, okay, my wedding gown is stored this way, but have I EVER taken it out of the acid free box since 1993? No. I probably should have a little look-see).​

​

The 15th boxes of mystery.  ​(Part of the Inheritance Project).

Box of mystery. (The catalyst for the Inheritance Project...have I really been working on this for two years?)

​

​On March 24, 1989, the super tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef -- a charted location in well-traversed Alaskan waters, a known marine hazard -- spilling nearly 11,000 gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound. Accounts list wildlife fatalities as high as this:  580,000 sea birds, 5,500 sea otters, 200 harbor seals and 22 orca whales. Fishing families lost their livelihoods, many marriages didn't survive this environmental, financial and community devastation. Think about the long term effects of that last part. 

At the time, I was about to graduate from high school thousands of miles away, on the cusp of my own self-centered life, with television images shaping the memory of this thing I never experienced. 6 months later, I would meet my husband. 28 years later, we are bringing our children to this place. Still wild. Still seemingly pristine. But probably a shadow of what it once was. We are not a part of that collective memory. Our experience is in its infancy, this, only our 8th season on these waters.

We have been cleaning beaches for 4 of those seasons. 2 adults, 2 kids (sometimes a few friends), a couple of double kayaks or a dingy, and a roll of contractor-weight trash bags ready for unfurling, snapping and often re-use. We've found everything from rubber gloves to Happy Meal toys, rusted wheels to cargo nets to balloons and syringes, and more exploding styrofoam buried in moss and seaweed than I care to recount.

​We've also found dead animals.
​

We clean up trash because it's there and because we see it. Does it make a difference? Not really. This year was our season to leave much of it behind -- our shore vessels too small to safely transport large objects back to our boat. Our boat too small or too full to safely haul objects back to the Whittier harbor for recycling or disposal.

This area (above) used to be a neatly stacked detritus pile above the high tide line on the east coast of Perry Island (outside of Day Care Bay), but it's a jumble this summer -- animals, weather and perhaps other well-meaning beach goers to blame. Despite the sprawl, much of it is bagged and contained, waiting for pick up...but we don't know who intends to do this work, where the money or man/woman/kid power will come from. We've watched it grow for 3 seasons. We remove what we can, when we can.
​

At other locations this summer, we've been the ones to haul and stack items above the high tide line. These are hiked-to beaches, reached through bog and mosquito forest, spilling onto rocky shores or weather/tidal conditions too unsafe to land a dingy or kayak -- a description that fits so much of Alaska's 6,640 miles of coastline. We've left bright markers (like that green plastic container), but don't know who to share them with or who will see them. 

We tell ourselves we'll go back for retrieval. When it's safe. When there are more of us, or better, less of us on the boat.

We've found evidence of celebration. And fragile, intact reasons to celebrate.
​

I've read that the spilled oil is still there, black sludge just a few inches below the surface on various gravel beaches. Of course it is. It has to be. I haven't dug for it, but sometimes I'm convinced I smell it.

But how do you distinguish one smell when low tide is such a combination of the beautiful and terrible? 
​

30 years from now, this place will have changed again. My children will return, or not, but theirs will be the voice of recollection -- so much louder and insistent than my own. They will describe salmon streams filled with enough wriggling bodies to bump and lift their kayaks, family hikes with so many piles of bear scat and obstacles back to the boat that by the time we return, it takes an hour for the hair on the backs of our necks to settle. They see more animals in one morning out here, than some children see in a year or more. Their earnest childhood conversations are peppered with words like "juvenile," "sign," "habitat," "species," "identification." I was still breast feeding Astrid when we began the first tentative journeys into Prince William Sound. Our children are now 11 and almost 9. 

Their perception of abundance moves forward from this point in time. It breaks my heart to know they will recognize a difference some day.
​

​*     *     *

To view a NOAA timeline chart for post-spill recovering species and habitats, click here. 

We aren't alone in this endeavor, here or elsewhere. There are a number of other people all over the world who also clean beaches. I follow some of them on Instagram. They are a mixture of scientists, biologists, wandering gypsy souls and artists:

@cleancoast_angel
@kittiekipper -- Ghostnet Goods
@seasheperdmarinedebristeam
@crochet_the_ocean
@plasticfreemermaid 
@joannaatherton -- UK coastline
@trashybeach
@kellyalance -- Central California coast 
​@balloons_blow -- BalloonsBlow.org

To read more about our family commitment to clean beaches, check out the blog sidebar category
Beach Work, then scroll past this post, which will show up at the top.