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Murals will soon adorn the Marine View building parking garage near Juneau’s cruise ship docks.
It’s part of a project years in the making that teaches local artists about the legal and creative sides of murals.
Maddox Rasmussen washed paintbrushes in between sections of a mural he was working on at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center on a recent Sunday afternoon. The Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé junior was painting a realistic orca swimming through the tendrils of an ethereal kelp forest. Rasmussen finished the orca’s fin and moved to a section of its body that’s white.
“I like blending on the palette or on the piece itself,” he said. “So sometimes, if I have leftover blue in a section that I want to be more white, it’ll mess it up.”
Rasmussen is one of 13 artists participating in a workshop to create murals in downtown Juneau. It’s the first time he’s worked on a large project like this. But art is not his only interest: he also swims competitively and works as a lifeguard.
He said it’s been a bit difficult to make time for the project on the weekends while balancing his other interests. He had a swim meet earlier in the day.
“It’s definitely a little hard, because the swim meet lasts all day, so I have to sacrifice the finals to come here,” he said. “But it’s okay.”
Rasmussen’s project is sandwiched between two artists along the wall of the JACC. Every mural has a different style – one artist is experimenting with spray paint and another carved a massive block print. The designs vary from folk art to landscapes and wildlife.
Each mural is 8 feet wide and 4 feet tall. Altogether that’s more than 100 feet-worth of new art for downtown Juneau.
Dezarae Arrowsun is at the helm of the project, which is a collaboration between her business, the Downtown Business Association, the Juneau Arts and Humanities Council and Princess Cruises.
Arrowsun owns Picture This, a custom frame shop in downtown Juneau with a view of the concrete walls of the Marine View parking garage that will be the future home for the murals. She said the idea came from wanting to beautify space downtown outside of her store, and she turned it into an opportunity to teach local artists more about mural making.
“A lot of the things that are very intimidating to artists is the permit process, the legal side of it, contractual side of it, and then site preparation. What do you have to look for as warning signs, those kind of things,” Arrowsun said. “So that’s how we came about this.”
The artists don’t get paid. Instead, they get education and materials, including large sheets of plywood that are treated to withstand the elements. After a year the murals will come down and the artists can either keep or sell their work.
Arrowsun said she put a lot of thought into making sure the murals will last an entire year in the Southeast Alaska elements. She said she wants it to be art for the community as a whole, not just something for tourists.
“I want us in Juneau to appreciate it all winter long, especially when it’s dark and, you know, we need some brightness and some beauty,” she said.
Arrowsun has a three-year contract with the Marine View owners and plans to run the workshop again next year. She said they plan to take applications this September.
Lillian Egan is another artist in the workshop. They work at the Pottery Jungle as a ceramic studio assistant, and have had their art featured around Juneau in the past. They’re painting a landscape with a little bit of fantasy added to it.
“I was thinking of, you know, what it’d be like to be up at Gold Creek, and kind of being the salmon in the river and coming up,” Egan said. “But also being able to be aware of the city in the backdrop and seeing the channel in the distance and stuff, but kind of seeing it from a perspective of, ‘This is what Juneau is.’”
They said it’s been fun to do more community art and they feel the city needs more of it.
“It’s been really cool to find out that it is kind of attainable for people, even in Juneau, to do community art and … have it like, actually support you financially,” they said.
In the future, they want to use their newfound skills to create more art in the community.
“How can I apply that into ways that can help our community more? I don’t know. I think about our recycling center right now, and how could I maybe make a mural like this, but with recycled materials in the future, would be pretty cool,” Egan said.
The murals are going to be installed in late April, with a celebration taking place May 1.
