Anchorage Daily News

Fairbanks artist James Grant worked to finish installing his large stained glass piece titled "A Dena'ina Day around Cook Inlet" at Anchorage's new Dena'ina Civic and Convention Center this week.

The full piece, in a foyer off the third-floor ballroom, measures 26 feet high and 17 feet wide. It is one of the major 1 Percent for Art pieces in the center.

Grant's central panel depicts Cook Inlet area Dena'ina Athabaskans at subsistence tasks -- berry picking, drying fish, hunting seal and beluga whale. Suspended below are images of Alaska game animals. Below that hang a man and woman in traditional dress. The man is shown singing, accompanying himself with a rattle. The woman is beating a plank drum.

The main section is capped by a panel representing the Chugach Mountains. Above and slightly in front of the stained glass pieces are 660 strands of colored beads suggesting the aurora borealis, created by Shirley Holmberg of Fairbanks.

Grant's original design had a more horizontal shape. It was intended to stretch across the building-length row of east-facing windows on the center's third floor. But those windows take in a panorama of the Chugach range, so it was decided to leave them unblocked.

To fit the work to the new location, a smaller south-facing window, Grant reworked his piece. The Dena'ina man and woman, for instance, were originally planned to flank the main frame. The locations of a sod-roof log house and other "Dena'ina Day" figures were moved in tighter and the composition became more compact.

The piece includes 4,000 pieces of colored glass, not counting the beads in the Northern Lights component.

The $111 million facility, which opened last month, will soon see crowds. Comedian Damon Wayans performed on Friday, the first "big name" star to perform at the center. The Alaska Federation of Natives Convention will take place there on the week of Oct. 20.

Find Mike Dunham online at adn.com/contact/mdunham.

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