Hygienic show features art with 'class'

Saturday afternoon, a light mist on Bank Street in downtown New London was just persistent enough to present a mosquito-like annoyance factor. The brightly lit Hygienic Art Galleries, though, offered the promise of shelter - along with a welcome and day-glo plethora of pieces from the new "Whalers & Lancers" exhibition.

The seventh annual show features works in a variety of mediums from art students at both Waterford and New London High Schools.

The opening reception took place Friday evening, and A. Vincent Scarano, the president of Hygienic Art, estimated about 500 students, parents and assorted art-enthusiasts attended.

"It was a very diverse and enthusiastic crowd," Scarano said. "You could tell the kids were proud and excited. They should be. There's some wonderful stuff here, and this gives them an actual gallery exhibition experience."

Both of the ground-level rooms in the gallery were full of pieces roughly arranged into sections featuring pottery and sculpture, photographs, and drawings and paintings.

The subject matter varied expansively. There are plenty of land- and seascapes, portraiture, and expressions ranging from abstract to realism. Various pieces seem to reflect themes of autumn - possibly because much of the student work was done in the fall semester.

There are also indications of the influence of popular culture with respective allusions to music such as Deadmau5 and Skillet as well as the television series "Pretty Little Liars."

For most of Saturday, attendance at the show was scarce and void of student artists - which was perhaps not surprising given the large turnout at the reception.

But those who did wander through were impressed by variety of disciplines and the skill level.

Jack Shackles, a pastor at Taftville Congregational Church, was walking in downtown New London and, seeing some of the art through the window, came in to see the exhibition.

"It's always encouraging to see students express themselves, and some of these pieces show a lot of talent," he said. "The technique and perspective, the humor and movement ... it's good stuff. It also helps show you the world through (the students') eyes. I also think it's really nice of the gallery to encourage them and give them space."

Scarano said that's the whole idea. "This is a professional art gallery as opposed to a classroom wall," he said. "Being an artist is like being in a band. You can rehearse in the garage all you want - and you should - but eventually you've got to play that first gig. This show is a gig experience for the students. It gives them that sense of pride, and it gives their families a sense of pride."

There is also the aspect that much of the work on display is for sale. Visitor Bud Bray, a resident of New London who studied the exhibition in leisurely but comprehensive fashion, said he was drawn immediately to an untitled crayon piece by New London High School student Austin Clay - and was dismayed to learn it had already been sold.

"If you want to be a professional artist, you've got to realize that there is a business side of art as well as the creative side," he said. "That's another great thing about not just this show but how the art departments at these schools operate today. The kids learn about the process of the business and how to price art work even as they learn technique."

 A "Celebration of Life" for Armond "Army" Kirschbaum will take place at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday at the Blue-Hollomon Gallery, 3555 Arctic Blvd. We previously noted his passing, at age 89, on Dec. 4, 2012, but this seems a good time to revisit some of his accomplishments, with information supplied by his family and friends.

Born in San Francisco March 25, 1923, he spent summers in Nome with his mother and stepfather who ran a trading post. He enlisted in the Navy after the attack on Pearl Harbor and served as a Seabee. After the war, he attended the San Francisco Art Institute on the GI bill, studying what was then called commercial art and is now known as graphic design.

He came to Anchorage in 1948, according to a Daily News interview in 1981. He told the reporter that he found five little theater groups and a symphony orchestra, but "there was nothing, nothing going on" in the visual arts.

He opened an advertising business with a strong commercial art component and sold art supplies to people who would become the core of the town's visual art community, like William Kimura and Alex Combs, well before they were actually making money from their art. He expanded his business to include a gallery and showed the work of Rie Munoz, Keith Appel, Bill Sabo and Pat Austin. He was instrumental in forming the Alaska Artists Guild.

He served on the Anchorage Historical and Fine Arts Museum Commission, on the boards of the Alaska Watercolor Society and was a founding member of the Anchorage Lions Club.

As an artist, Kirschbaum produced paintings and murals, including some of the prominent pieces at the Hotel Captain Cook. When the city of Anchorage merged with the Greater Anchorage Area Borough, he created the seal for the new municipality.

Some said they had known him and the picture included with the article was not of him; others who knew him said it certainly was.

It didn't take long for folks with connections to the old homesteading community at the head of Kachemak Bay to get word to his grandson, Ron Wieber, and we connected by phone early last week. Wieber told me that the "old man's" name was properly spelled Alvia Mattox and that he was best known as "Matt." He was born in 1879 in Buffalo, Wyo., and was working at the Turkey Track Cattle Company there at the turn of the century.

It was a wild and woolly place, Wieber said. "He told me how he encountered a sheep herder one time and they shot it out. He wound up with a bullet in his back that he carried to his grave."

He came to Alaska to work in the gold fields in Nome, Wieber said, and accumulated enough of a stake to fund his ranching efforts in the Homer area. That would not have been during the first Nome gold rush, however, since the 1910 census shows him still living in Wyoming and the 1930 census has him living in Unalaska -- herding sheep. Wieber thought Mattox's Nome years were in the '30s.