Alaska News

Rough rider: From biker to international artist, Ted Herlinger has lived it all

Ted Herlinger is one of those larger-than-life Alaska characters. His nonfiction life reads like a novel: artist, cook, traveler, soldier, writer, fisherman and a known associate of the Hells Angels married to a literature professor. Combination Walter Mitty and Forrest Gump, clad in a biker jacket with "Art Attack" written on the back, he is a familiar face in the art crowd.

The man is bold, boisterous and profane. He has lived a life of highs and lows, of daring and doing. Politically, he takes no prisoners. Artistically, he crosses lines. Emotionally, his heart beats warmly for the struggling artist, the fallen soldier and the disadvantaged.

Herlinger dropped out of school in Prineville, Oregon, at age 16, and bought a one-way ticket to San Francisco where, within an hour, he was hired to work on a fishing boat for the season. Once back home, he was recruited to fight fires and later worked for four years in the land title business. He resigned and drove to Mexico.

In Tepic, Mexico, he bought a Harley he describes as "a trike built for desert warfare. No chain, enclosed drive shaft. Sweet." He drove up a hellish road in the Sierra Madres and stayed with indigenous people who knew neither English nor Spanish. "Nicest people I ever met," he said.

In 1970, he enrolled in Sacramento City College, where he helped found the college magazine, studying under influential artists such as Wayne Thiebaud. He traces what he calls his "professional beginning" to 1993, when he received a master of fine arts degree in screenwriting from UAA. His thesis was a full-length script he describes as "a coming-of-age story of a young woman in a small Southeast Alaska town hit by an oil boom."

His association with the Hells Angels has waned, he says. "The Angels I knew are now either dead or gone. I know hardly any of the younger members and no longer go to the clubhouse."

Herlinger's wife, Judith K. Moore, is a professor emeritus of literature at UAA. She sees no connection between herself and the Hells Angels. She met Herlinger when he was one of her students in an 18th-century literature class. "It was probably a good thing he wasn't active in the Angels at that time. I'm curious about a lot of things I don't want to participate in," she said.

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They forged a relationship based upon what Moore describes as "overlapping senses of humor and artistic interests." They enjoy a collection of art that includes works by Herlinger.

"One of the first things I noticed in him was his immense appreciation for the work of other artists," Moore said. "Writers can be very spiteful of each other, so this was something of a novelty."

In the early 1980s, Herlinger found himself homeless in Anchorage. He is lavish in praise of his wife, whom he met in 1986 and married in 1987. "She literally saved my life," he explained. "Her love and encouragement have been vital to my development as an artist."

He later received a commission to design a red oak donor board for the Brother Francis Shelter. "You could say I got to give back a little," he said.

In 1993, he enrolled in a printmaking class at UAA to produce a series of intaglio prints made from collages, which he showed at the Cooltan Gallery in London. It was followed by a 1998 print show at Out North called "Imminent Perspectives." The exhibition dealt with contemporary phenomena such as global warming and terrorism. He envisioned the images as if one were "standing naked in public places, metaphorically, vulnerable to the fear and apprehension accompanying isolation. The figures wear gas masks -- symbolic safeguards against a profane state of nature."

In 2002, his wife brought back a large paper cutting from China. For Ted, It was the inspiration for a series of transparencies mounted over sheets of handmade paper called "The Weight of Death is a Mystery." One of the prints was purchased for the permanent collection of the Anchorage Museum.

When he had a hip replacement surgery in 2004, Herlinger said he coveted the bone the surgeon would remove from his body. "I couldn't imagine a more intimate element for use in my work." The event led to a series of works called "Reliquaries." It consisted of 12 shadow boxes containing bones, blood tubes, MRIs, X-rays and DNA panels. He calls them the "oracles of contemporary dogma."

Herlinger said that if his life were a film, the summer of 2010 would be a plot point, a scene that sends his story in a new direction. He enrolled in a hog gut workshop with artist Lucie Charbonneau. Inspired by that experience, he constructed 40 "meditative helixes."

The helixes are curvilinear forms of reed, hog gut and artificial sinew, which he showed in the Guest Room Gallery at the International Gallery of Contemporary Art in Anchorage. Subsequently, artist Tommy Joseph introduced him to elk sinew and he did a second series at Out North Gallery. Herlinger said the use of natural materials gave him a sense of "revisiting the prehistoric roots of art."

In 2012, he traveled with his wife on a cruise called "In the Wake of Odysseus." He manipulated photographs taken in Turkey, Greece and Malta for a series of inkjet prints.

Currently, he is working on a series of transparencies that are close-ups of birch bark, in a process he describes as "a sort of poor person's hologram."

Herlinger describes a tour he took of the cave drawings in Lascaux, France, before they were closed to the public. He said that upon seeing the paintings he was overwhelmed. "I realized I was crying. The paintings filled the walls and ceiling. If I hadn't been an artist before, I was (then). I felt akin to the people who had done this work."

He still makes art, writes and cooks. The artistic quality of his past work is uneven, but always thoughtful, sincere and edgy. The content can be tough. He dances to a score he writes himself. His style and media are all over the map, even off-road -- always irreverent and anti-establishment.

You know, kind of like a Hells Angel.

Don Decker is an Anchorage artist, writer and teacher

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