Art Opening
Saturday May 18th 6-8pm
Resurrect Art Coffee House Gallery
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“Fish and Their Flies”
by
Janina Simutis~acrylics on canvas
&
Bob Schafer~and his flies
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appetizers and live music

Sitka basket and textile weaver Teri Rofkar has been named the 2013 Rasmuson Distinguished Artist. The $40,000 award, announced today in Anchorage, recognizes an artist with stature and a history of creative excellence. Rofkar is the tenth Alaskan artist to receive the award, and she joins a prestigious list of previous winners including Kes Woodward (2012), Ray Troll (2011), John Luther Adams (2010), Nathan Jackson (2009), Ronald Senungetuk (2008), Rie Munoz (2007), Delores Churchill (2006), John Haines (2005) and Sylvester Ayek (2004).

In December 2003, the Rasmuson Foundation Board of Directors launched a multi-year initiative to make a significant investment into the arts and cultural resources of the state. Designed with the help from artists and arts organizations from around the state, the initiative prioritized support to practicing artists themselves as a key strategy to ensure Alaska enjoys a vibrant art and culture community.

This is the tenth year of the Individual Artist Awards program, and as of today, the program has awarded 303 grants, totaling more than $2.3 million, directly to Alaska artists.  The purpose of the awards is to allow artists to seek a variety of creative opportunities, including providing them with the time necessary to focus on creative work.

About the Foundation

The Rasmuson Foundation was created in May 1955 by Jenny Rasmuson to honor her late husband, “E.A.” Rasmuson. The Foundation is a catalyst to promote a better life for all Alaskans.

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Join us this Friday May 17th and Saturday May 18th @ 7pm in the Seward High School Theater
Seward Arts Council is proud to sponsor this local community talent show
“FIRE & ICE”
This years talent includes performances in dance, music and poetry.
ALL proceeds go towards scholarships for Seward/Moose Pass area kids interested in any fine arts program.

Adults $10
Seniors/Kids 13-18 $5
Kids 12 and under FREE!
Intermission BAKE SALE yum!

Seward Museum welcomes folks to come in and sit and chat, and share some history. Heidi Zemach photo.

The Seward Community Library Museum has two events this Saturday May, 11th. Everyone is invited to attend the new mural’s dedication and the museum’s grand opening. The mural dedication is at 12:30pm, followed by the museum grand opening ceremony at 1:00pm. Admission to the museum is free following the ribbon cutting ceremony. The library will open at 2pm following the museum’s grand opening.

The mural, Seward’s largest ever, was created by Nichole Feemster, and was painted and prepared by a large group of dedicated community volunteers. It was recently hung on the building’s south face, and provides a great deal more color and storytelling mystique to the building’s already fascinating shifting-color tiled exterior.

This pioneer’s bedroom scene is also on display in the new Seward Museum. Heidi Zemach photo.

The new museum retains much of its original old flavor, with an oriental rug, the same welcoming wooden table and chairs for people to gather around, and it offers the same collection of historical artifacts. But it is arranged in such a way, progressing from one segment or  theme to another, with good lighting to allow people to view the displays in a new, more comprehensive light, with help from some handsome new showcases on platforms built just for the new building. I guarantee you will notice things that you have not seen before, even though they were there all along! The historical society members will volunteer to keep the museum open on Sundays during the busy summertime when the library is closed. Folks are saying that with the museum, the 1964 Earthquake documentary showing, and library all in the same location, there should be more visitor traffic, and more money and attention generated to Seward’s historical treasures.

Bailey Lespron and Nick Zweifel, gladiators, perform their fight scene at the Colosseum.

By Heidi Zemach for SCN

Last night the Seward High School Drama production, ‘A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Colosseum,” a comedy in two acts opened to a full house at Seward High Auditorium. If you missed it, there’s another chance to see it tonight, Wednesday May 8^th at 7:00 p.m., or Thursday, May 9^th, at 5:30 p.m.

Set in ancient Roman times, the play has all the usual hilarity people have come to expect from SHS plays, the jokes, visual comedy, unusual music, romance, dance scenes and fight scenes. It has a cast of 33 enthusiastic young actors and actresses, and all did a beautiful job with their given roles.

Produced by Mark Teckenbrock and Ronn Hemstock and directed by Dan Marshall, the play differs from the rest in that it features the amazing new “Lazy Susan” style revolving stage set, which allows three different scene set changes to occur in mere moments. The photo you see is one of the sets built with steps and a platform that allows a multi-story approach. The iron skeletal set frame was welded in the shop in pieces by Hemstock’s welding students. Then it was brought into the theater and assembled onto a center pin spindle, mounted in the middle of the stage. The idea was Teckenbrock’s, and Hemstock was able to help him make it a reality. The theater design class then created and painted the sets and added backdrops. The revolving set can be easily screwed apart into its main components and stored flat until it needs to be reassembled for the next play or event, which should only take a few hours.

Come see the high school choir’s concert, “A Tour Through Disney.”
It’s on Saturday, May 11th, at  7:00 pm
at the Seward High Auditorium
Free Admission

The Seward High School Drama Class presents:

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way to the Colosseum

Simplcuss, a naive farmer from Gallia Alpina, heads to Rome to follow his dream, to be the first Roman, Stand-Up Comedian. Unfortunately, a severe misunderstanding lands our hero not only in trouble, but in the arena, in a fierce battle to the death with the feared female gladiator Dominatia Violencia.

This performance will show nightly:

Tuesday, May 7         7pm

Wednesday, May 8   7pm

Thursday, May 9        5:30pm

Cost of Admission is $7.00 for an individual and $20.00 per family.

We do not recommend that you bring babies or very small children to the high school productions. Thanks much.

Seward Community Choir rehearses for its Spring Concert this Thursday evening, May 2nd, at the Rae Building. Heidi Zemach photo

By Heidi Zemach for Seward City News

The Seward Community Choir’s spring concert will be held at the UAF Marine Science Center/Rae Building auditorium Thursday, May 2^nd as 7:00 p.m, and if you enjoy choral music, or just want a pick me up, you don’t want to miss it.  The building is at the bottom of Third Avenue, and the concert is totally free!  It’s a new location for a community choir concert, and the choir is under the new leadership of pianist Sue McClure. The concert is not being done with the high school choir this year, so it should last under an hour.

McClure has selected several old timey, and well-loved songs from musicals that our parents or grandparent’s generation should remember: Songs like Irving Berlin’s “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” with lyrics like:

“They can play a bugle call like you never heard before,

so natural that you want to go to war.

That’s just the bestest band what am, what am, Honey Lamb!”

My mother used to burst into singing the last few lines just mentioned without any context or apparent reason, and I never knew where they came from until now.

There’s also a most rousing rendition of “A Wonderful Day Like Today,” from the David Merrick-Bernard Delfont production “The Roar of the Greasepaint-The Smell of the Crowd.” Choir members seem to loosen up and really belt that one out, and it’s also the one they seem to can’t get out of their heads.

And there’s Steven C, Foster’s Banjo Medley that has the ladies parts singing, “Camptown ladies sing this song,” and the tenor and bases responding with, “Doo-dah, Doo-dah!”

Younger audiences will enjoy recognize the spiritual, “Down to the River to Pray,” featured in “O Brother Where Art Thou,” or the four-part choral arrangement of “I Gave My Love A Cherry,” which young musicians used to sing while strumming the guitar, trying to impress their girl or boyfriends.

The choir also will perform “Fa Una Conzona,” a light Italian “canzonetta,” by Orazi Vecchi, from Robert Shaw’s early-music series, and a rip-roaring madrigal, difficult to pull off, called “Good Ale.”

Newcomers, as always, are always welcome to join the choir with every new season, and the concert is an opportunity to see what we’re all about, or just to enjoy an uplifting show.

Artist, Susan Swiderski teaches 5th and 6th grade students about color value and brush stroke techniques.

Kenai Fjords National Park will be celebrating its sixth year of the successful Art for Parks program with an art show opening on Friday, May 3 at the Information Center, located in the small boat harbor.  From 6pm to 8pm, you can learn about the animals, glaciers, plants, and weather of the park through student art work. This year’s theme is Did You Know? The Truth about Kenai Fjords National Park.

The art show is Kenai Fjords National Park’s way of celebrating National Park Week which occurs every year at the end of April, a little ahead of an ice free road to Exit Glacier.    In the past, the park has paired artists with teachers in all of Seward’s classrooms.  After five years of excellent art instruction, many teachers will be taking the lead in helping students research facts about the park and communicate them through art.   Local artists, including Susan Swiderski, Cindy Capra, Dot Bardarson, and Fiona Ritter-Davis, will assist with projects this year.  The show will have a wide variety of media from sculpture to ceramics, and watercolor to block printing.

If you want to see the work of Seward’s young artists and learn about Kenai Fjords National Park, come out for Seward’s First Friday event.  The show will be available for viewing after May 3 from May 11 to May 16 in the Information Center.

Happy Friday!  Here is some Ceramic Art…  (more stuff here at our blog)

Humans and masks have always gone together.  Cultures throughout history have made masks for ceremony and ritual.  The masks simultaneously hide the wearer while transforming them, exaggerating some power or characteristic within.  Animal features are often used to represent the wearer taking on that animals spirit or traits.  We looked at various masks from around the world and students created their own.  Here are some!:

Mary Ramirez

Sam Melvin

Gabby Katsma

Mitch Ludwig (more…)

Nichole Feemsters’ mural is going up on the South side of the Library Museum building.  The install is being conducted by Harmon Construction.  The vibrant colors of the mural match the colors that change with the light on the siding of the building.

Nichole’s design is centered on the idea of stories.  We are beginning to see a family, sitting by a fire sharing a story.

Stop by to see the mural come to life, who is listening in while the ‘story’ is being told?

Photo’s by: M Tougas

Harmon Construction starts the install.

Panels joined and starting to tell a ‘story’.

The mural panels painted during the paint weekend got their last top coating this Saturday.  The ‘Top Coat Gang’ has now placed a top coating three different times to get all of the panels ready for their install.  Nichole Feemster would like to thank all the volunteers that have come out to help with the mural that she has spent months working on.

Watch for the mural to start it’s install phase on the South side of the Library Museum building this next week.  The museum exhibit opening will be coming in May and the mural will be in place!

Photos are taken in the Hertz of Seward garage, where the ‘Top Coat Gang’ has been hard at work…can you recognize anyone?

The ‘Top Coat Gang’
Photo by: M Tougas

“Missed a spot here!”
Photo by: M Tougas

Carefully following a line
Photo by: M Tougas

For SCN by Heidi Zemach

Seward El students enjoy their assembly events. Heidi Zemach photo

Several hundred children in Pre-K through 6th grade sang softly along to the Seward Elementary Guitar Club’s renditions of Bob Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind,” and Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.” The six boys in Jim Pfeiffenberger and Terri McKnight’s lunchtime club strummed like pros and were treated like rock stars, and given the high-five treatment as they returned, smiling, to their seats. Their performance, and that of guest guitarist Rick Brooks, wrapped up five months of lunch hour practice, making it all come together. The students stepped it up a notch higher, clapping and stomping when Brooks, a performer from Anchorage, started out his set by playing a blusey solo whose words were to the effect that if you can’t find anyone to love you, learn to love yourself. They cheered when Brooks asked if they’d like to hear a Justin Bieber song, but looked mildly confused when he played them “Oops, I did it again,” a 2000 Britney Spear’s song, instead.

Brooks wowed another audience with another concert later in the evening at the Ressurect Arts Coffeehouse and Gallery Friday, sponsored by the Seward Arts Council. He held a small workshop in fingerstyle playing at Pfeiffenberger’s house on Sunday. He’s a skilled player and teacher with vast experience and talent in blues style and early English folk revival guitar-picking music, and he’s also quite a well-versed music historian.

Cheerleaders boost school spirits. Heidi Zemach photo

After listening to Brooks, Seward Elementary students watched 16 of their own “cheerleaders” perform a series of cheers. Those that could did some cartwheels. In one cheer they faked air guitar playing, but they all looked great to me and the rest of the audience in their matching blue sports tee-shirts.
The assembly finished up with a Mars-Rover contest with original models that teams of students had created under the leadership of QUEST instructor Agusta Lind, and with help from parent-volunteers. They ran these along an obstacle course that included a ramp, bubbly-wrap, through some martian rocks (coffee cans) and into a space station.

With Spring sprung, and the school year fast winding down, it looks like the schools are making extra efforts to keep the kids engaged in learning, and to provide new creative opportunities. On Monday, a Shakespeare group from Fairbanks performed at a high school/middle school assembly. On Wednesday, the middle school 7th grade will be taking a marine-science cruise on Resurrection Bay aboard a Kenai Fjords Tours boat.

Guitar Club entertains the school. Heidi Zemach photo

Emulating the style of graphic artist Nikki Farquharson, SHS art students created their own marker drawings, choosing and tracing a subject matter and then surrounding it with colorful patterns.  Happy Friday and here they are:

Tessa Lyman

Grace Wombacher

Diana German

Rachel Tougas

Gabby Katsma

(more…)

Nichole Feemster thanks the wonderful community folks that signed up and stopped in to help with the panels this last weekend.  18 panels, size 4×8, were given their first, second and sometimes third coats of paint during the paint weekend at the cruise ship terminal.  Thank you to the Alaska Railroad and the City of Seward for the space to set up and paint, and the Library Museum volunteers for helping to move, set up and help with the weekend details.  Nichole was on site each day to oversee the painting and directing the helping hands.  She would like to thank the volunteer painters, some came more than one day, and a *special Thank You to Mary Daniels for soups and baked goods, Yum!

The panels are getting the artists final touch and will then have a top coating applied before they are ready to go up on the white walls of the South side of the Library Museum building.  Our helping hands:

Jim Pfeiffenberger keeps club members strumming together during Tuesday’s Guitar Club practise. Heidi Zemach photo.

By Heidi Zemach for SCN

At lunch time Tuesday afternoon Seward Elementary School’s guitar club members rehearsed two folk tunes they’ve been working hard to perfect. They will perform Woody Guthrie’s famous anthem, “This Land is Your Land,” and Bob Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind” before a large gathering of their peers at school Friday afternoon. The guitar club will be the opening act for guest artist Rick Brooks, an accomplished Anchorage fingerstyle guitarist with a background in British folk and American blues.

The students have been learning simple guitar tunes since Thanksgiving under the guidance of local songster Jim Pfeiffenberger and teacher Terri McKnight. The assembly wraps up this year’s guitar program, a small but pleasant extracurricular edition to the music offerings at the school.

The five boys who showed up for practice Tuesday strummed together in a tight ensemble as they sang, playing on the straight beats the first time through, then on the offbeat or chuck of the  “boom chuck,” which sounds even cooler.

“Guitar’s awesome,” said Brendan Alan McMurray. “We practice once a week, and we learn… and you can impress your family members.” “I like guitar because you get to perform for others, you get to play songs, and it’s fun when you play songs,” said Sam Koster.

Pfeiffenberger had some trouble getting the boys to sing out, as they were shy, and more focused on their guitar playing. But the adrenaline may kick in at show time, and if they don’t sing louder, their young audience may well join in and help out, especially if their leaders decide to project the words on an overhead screen.

“Remember, the girls will be watching,” warned Pfeiffenberger, eliciting shy smiles, and at least one boy to suggest that they should exchange their acoustic guitars for electric ones.

Two of Pfeiffenberger’s sons are in the guitar club. The club has had as many as 13 or 14 participants over the course of the five-months, he said, but interest has waned as other activities beckon, leaving this core group of around five or six who chose to stay with it. Jim likes to bring guest performers into the school to inspire the students generally, and to show them where they could go with their instrument if they stick with it.

Pfeiffenberger, who works for the National Park Service, performs in a long-standing group called “Good Dog” that he co-founded more than a dozen years ago with vocalist Liesl Davenport-Wheeler. They performed at the 2012 Seward Arts and Music Festival, and often take their act elsewhere around the state.

Brooks will perform a public concert at the Resurrect Art Coffeehouse on Friday, April 12 at 7 pm, an event sponsored by the Seward Arts Council. Brooks is an accomplished fingerstyle guitarist with a background in British folk and American blues. He performs and teaches in Anchorage and is a perennial instructor at the Acoustic Alaska Guitar Camp.