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| Michael Penn / Juneau Empire |
 On display: Left, Beverly Cover talks with Marilyn Holmes, right, during the opening at the Alaska State Museum on Friday. Right, Fran Reed shows off the hidden willow leaves in a salmon skin basket to Joyce Thoresen at the museum. |
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Fish skins and photography are the chosen mediums of two award-winning Anchorage artists whose shows signal the beginning of the Alaska State Museum's fall and winter exhibition series.
Museum visitors can catch Fran Reed's baskets and sculptural forms made from fish skins and gut, as well as Beverly Cover's evocative black-and-white photographs through Nov. 24. Reed and Cover are part of a cycle of 29 artists featured at the state museum.
"These artists were selected for their high level of professionalism," said Bob Banghart, the Alaska State Museum's curator. "They're mature artists and noted in their respective medias. We want to bring variety ... (for the) community to partake in."
Reed's exhibition is called "Of Time and Place: Contemporary Expressions in Fishskin," and her creations call to mind Native Alaska subsistence while at the same time they function as contemporary art objects.
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| Michael Penn / Juneau Empire |
| Fran Reed shows off the hidden willow leaves in a salmon skin basket to Joyce Thoresen at the museum. |
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"My work consists of using materials from my environment," Reed said. "It is in response to Alaska and its people, the desire to recycle and the ongoing curiosity of exploration."
Reed says her materials "form a connection with history and today's lifestyle." Her creations strive for a "balance between texture and simplicity of line and form," she said.
Reed graduated from the University of Oregon in 1967 with a degree in art education and initially taught weaving. In 1986, she turned her attention to the possibilities of working with fish skin and gut materials while at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
"I was encouraged to move from looming to basket weaving," Reed said. "I gathered 'river kill' from the Chena River and purchased hog gut from the local meat market."
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| Michael Penn / Juneau Empire |
| Sneek peak: A toned-silver print by Beverly Cover titled "Weather #2: Twister." |
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Her first creation in her new medium was shown at the San Francisco Folk Art Museum in 1987. The following year she moved to Anchorage. Since then, she has won recognition for her work in exhibitions across the country.
Beverly Cover's latest exhibit of traditional darkroom-based photography is titled "Entering Into." She has garnered numerous awards in Alaska exhibitions, including the top award in the statewide Alaska Positive photography exhibition in 2000.
Cover creates abstract work on a light table in her studio, as well as captures natural subjects in the outdoors.
"Whether I am straddling an almost frozen creek, hoping it will support me and my tripod, or (I'm) in my studio making up worlds with paper and light, there is exhilaration in capturing an ephemeral moment," Cover said.
Her work makes use of a wide range of often-subtle tones and ambiguities of shape and form.
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| Michael Penn / Juneau Empire |
| Sculpture by Fran Reed. Untitled work of driftwood, gut and moose droppings. |
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"It is ... my intent that I share my deep connection to the natural world with others," she said. "I hope to convey, in a quiet way, a sense of awe, mystery and fragility -an abiding reverence for this planet and beyond."
Since receiving her bachelor's degree in art in 1986, Cover resides in Anchorage where she has been pursuing her photography career for the past 12 years.
Her work is found in the state's major museums. She has had solo exhibitions at the Anchorage Museum at the Rasmuson Center and at the Decker/Morris Gallery in Anchorage. She also is on the board of directors of the Alaska Photographic Center and a member of the Society for Photographic Education.
