Talk about natural resources.
If you attended “Rusty Compass, Dusty Rose” or “Last of the Red Hot Lovers” at the Chilkat Center, you saw a lot besides a great show.
You saw the fruit of more than 50 years of effort in the form of Lynn Canal Community Players, and the unselfish dedication of longtime volunteers like Tod Sebens and Margaret Sebens.
You also saw the legacy of a generation of Haines artists and teachers – Dan Henry and Linnus Danner immediately come to mind – who promoted excellence in arts and imbued in a younger generation not only the desire, but the skills to lift community theater to an exceptional standard.
You also got a glimpse of the potential for Haines, a future that defies uncertain economies and shaky budgets. That future is in the arts.
Going way back to 1830 and the carving of the Whale House pieces and other masterworks, art is what put our tiny settlement on the map of the world. The only real question is whether we have the courage to invest in that legacy and carry it into the future.
Tresham Gregg, my colleague on the borough assembly, won’t stop beating this drum. I’m tired of hearing it, but it’s on the mark: In the culture market, Haines has the potential to be something big.
Gregg’s economics make sense. There is only so much ore in the Palmer prospect and there are only so many salmon in the sea, he says. But the number of people who would enjoy a visit to Haines is virtually unlimited, and art is a shiny lure for hooking them on this place.
Like visitors, art is an infinitely renewable resource, and it’s already what we’re about.
It was when the Village of Klukwan opened its Jilkaat Kwaan Heritage Center last May as it was in 1957 when Carl Heinmiller launched Alaska Indian Arts. It was when the Chilkat Center for the Arts opened in 1967 as it was in 2014 when Aaron Nash bolted his “rubber ducky” dyptich to the wall of Main Street’s liquor store.
We have fine art and fine artists. We must find a way to start capitalizing on them, literally.
This is what the Alaska Arts Confluence is all about, and something the Haines Borough’s economic development efforts need to zero in on, for this reason: Unlike other ideas for boosting the economy, residents are already at work creating art, and the arts have wide public support. A little bit of municipal assistance could push our town – as an arts hub – a long way.
Could the Mosquito Lake School become a charter school or private school for the arts along the lines of New York City’s LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts? Might such a school attract people to live here? If the old Coliseum Theater building on Main Street doesn’t succeed as a retail location, how about reincarnation as a Puppet Theater and Museum? Gepetto’s Junkyard has staged shows that are outrageously fun and intriguing.
And what about the idea of resurrecting some version of ACTFEST in Haines? The week-long theater festival drew community theater groups from all of Alaska for 20 years before tripping over some relatively small hurdles: the cost of travel to Haines, and a burnt-out pool of local volunteers.
But ACTFEST, which enjoyed generous state support during the oil boom years, never tried marketing itself to potential audiences in Juneau and Whitehorse, Y.T. The fact that thespians relished the opportunity of coming to Haines in April suggests that audiences might feel the same way.
There are unlimited ideas, a few of which might fly. Thomas Edison said he had 3,000 theories for inventing a light bulb, two of which worked.
Haines inspires art and attracts artists. Those are natural resources as real as salmon and trees and gold. How to refine arts resources and fashion them into an attractive product to market and sell to the world is our challenge. It’s a worthy one. We need to get at it, as our light bulb may take a few years to invent.