Beach artist between a rock and a hard place as summer plans wrecked by boat burglary

The “stone woman” Blake Byers left on Sandy Beach all winter is still there, but she won’t be getting any new companions this summer since the artist’s sailboat was ransacked during the winter, forcing him into a gillnetting job rather than his original plan of creating more shoreside portraits.

Byers, who departed Juneau last November after spending 10 days using rocks on Sandy Beach to create the 25-foot-wide face of a South African model, said he discovered the break-in when returned to his boat at the Intermediate Vessel Float on May 20. Many items were missing, others damaged and the space was generally befouled.

“It looked like somebody just ransacked everything,” he said. “They went through the sails, they took three jerry cans off deck, there’s a couple cubbies right by the tiller that were just packed with stuff. My AIS, my radio, my batteries. They tried to get into the engine and take my alternator, and then they realized they couldn’t do it after they probably cut the wires.”

Clothes and trash were on the floor, notes and phone with recordings for a book project missing, and the doors and cabinets left ajar, Byers said. He said he has done initial cleanup and repair work to make the boat functional again, but full repairs likely won’t be completed until the end of the summer — and some things aren’t salvageable.

“I have to replace a lot of things that were taken off the boat that I utilize on a daily basis,” he said. “A lot of it was very custom stuff.”

As a result, Byers said he’ll be spending his summer helping on a fishing boat rather than using his boat to explore shores where new portraits made from natural elements there can be crafted.

“The only reason why I took the gillnetting job is because it’s a sure dollar amount and the (art) pieces haven’t reaped any financial reciprocity for me at all,” he said. “So it would be more for the enjoyment and the storytelling and the love of the art than what I’m going to be doing, which is something I told (my girlfriend) Alyssa: ‘I don’t really want to do this, but I have to.’”

Byers began working on the Sandy Beach portrait in early November, using a photo of the model and a drone to monitor his process as he recreated the face from nearby rocks. He departed to spend the winter in the Lower 48 soon after it was completed without any official “opening” to showcase his work, other than posting images and video of it on social media.

An overhead image of the model Byers crafted on Sandy Beach shows it’s still a recognizable face — if somewhat less sharply detailed — after six months of exposure to winter tides, weather, and whatever people and animals may have made tracks across it. He said that’s an unusual amount of longevity compared to numerous such faces he created in Southeast Alaska and elsewhere.

“I think because of the type of rock and also the fact it’s a channel — and it’s not a beach on a straight — so the impact of the fluctuating waters isn’t as graphic as it would be if it’s being pounded by waves,” he said.

A Juneau Police Department bulletin for May 20 lists the incident as a burglary reported on Franklin Street, without further details. JPD Deputy Chief Krag Campbell, in an email Monday, stated the case “is actively being investigated” and details generally aren’t made public in such circumstances.

Byers said there appear to be people of suspicion in the case since a GPS locator device stolen from his boat was transmitting signals from a Mendenhall Valley home. He said a JPD officer who responded to the initial burglary call, after visiting the home and speaking to a person there, “told me, basically, ‘go knock on the door’ and ask about the missing items.

Byers, with a couple of friends waiting in a car nearby, talked to a woman and then a man he described as “kind of transient” during two different encounters at the house. The woman told him to leave a list of the items, while the conversation with the man after providing the list failed to resolve the situation.

Once the summer is over Byers said he plans to depart Juneau and isn’t likely to return soon since he plans to visit Homer, then travel through Canada’s Northwest Passage to the east coast of that country, and then consider a possible voyage across the Atlantic.

• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.