Artists put their visions of Palmer on display

"I'm happy with the variety," said Palmer Museum of History and Art executive director DeLena Johnson, surveying 23 paintings hung on black fabric at the Palmer Visitors Center last week.

Artist Kristy Tracy of Palmer offered a large painting depicting a mother bear and two cubs making blueberry jam in a cozy kitchen.

Meadow Lakes painter Judy Vars entered a smaller piece showing a handful of musk oxen huddling against winter weather, with three-dimensional snow clumps knotting their fur.

Palmer artist and pilot Carmen Summerfield entered an abstract painting of a bicycle in black silhouette with each quadrant of space filled with bold blocks of color.

Amid soft music, wine and delicious-looking appetizers, Valley artists mingled with Palmer Museum members and people from the community. All were bent on their job for the evening, to pick their five favorite pieces of art of the 23 paintings submitted.

The event was the second of its kind for the relatively newly formed Palmer Museum of History and Art. The museum, started in 2005, received a roughly $1,500 grant from the Anchorage-based Rasmuson Foundation this year to buy a piece of local art to add to its collection.

Rasmuson handed out a comparable grant of $1,000 last year. After a similar process, the museum board chose a dramatic painting of a girl at Summit Lake in Hatcher Pass by Douglas Girard.

The canning bears, bold bicycle and hoary musk oxen didn't make the final cut for selection this year, but received plenty of oohs and ahhs from the minglers. The paintings chosen for a final round of voting by the Palmer Museum board were less fanciful, but no less varied.

Wasilla artist Sharon Harris said she sought to evoke a nostalgic feeling when she created her Norman Rockwell-esque painting of modern-day downtown Palmer.

Harris' piece is a soft-focus rendering of streets and buildings that includes the Purple Moose Espresso café, Matanuska-Susitna Borough government building and Palmer water tower against the backdrop of a snowy Matanuska Peak.

Palmer artist Judi Rideout's piece "Watching," of a swan with its glossy black beak tucked into downy feathers, prompted an instinct among several at the event to reach out to the painting as if to stroke the swan.

Erik Deeter, of Wasilla, has two quite different entries in the running for final selection. He said he was trying to paint a conventional portrait of a young assistant when, after hours of posing, the assistant darted away and began chasing chickens.

Deeter grabbed his camera and snapped a photo that he turned into the impressionistic pastoral scene done in broad strokes of green, yellow and red that he called "Chasing Chickens."

His second piece, "Winter Bones," shows an old double-crib barn with two walled-in sections separated by a drive-through. The barn, missing sections of its roof, is set in a bland-colored field. Shades of green growth glow in a patch of sunshine that can be seen only through the barn's open drive-through.

Deeter said he sees themes of death and rebirth in the painting. Palmer Museum board member Jim Beck listed it among his favorites and, when discussing the painting with his 11-year-old daughter Olivia, said it was a "rare piece," a painting he "could look at day after day."

Palmer artist Gail Niebrugge submitted a 1996 painting that was used as the cover of the book, "Frontier Physician," a biography by Nancy Jordan about Dr. C. Earl Albrecht.

Albrecht worked throughout Alaska, but started out in Palmer treating the colonists. He treated tuberculosis cases around the state, and Niebrugge's painting shows him standing outside a Palmer chicken coop marked "Isolation Ward" with his doctor's bag in hand.

Niebrugge said Epicenter Press commissioned her to do the cover. She used photos supplied by Albrecht's family to paint the portrait in her renowned pointillism style.

Palmer Museum members plan to announce their final selection at the Dec. 12-14 Colony Christmas celebration in Palmer.

The painting will be on display at the Palmer Visitors Center throughout Colony Christmas.

Find Daily News reporter Rindi White online at adn.com/contact/rwhite or call 352-6709.