By: Grace Dumas, News of the North
The Juneau-Douglas City Museum is gearing up for Gallery Walk tonight, featuring the opening of a new exhibition, “Art Scraps.”
Museum Director Beth Weigel said the annual downtown celebration will include a trolley stop at the Capitol, making it easy for visitors to drop into the museum and explore the new show by Juneau artists Bo Anderson and Kathleen Harper.
“It’s just so fun and whimsical.” She said, “There’s lots of pieces for sale, and it’s just going to be a super fun exhibit and opportunity at the City Museum.”
Anderson and Harper, partners in life as well as in art, said the exhibit grew out of both artists’ shared love of repurposing found materials.
“I will have piles of random things sitting in my house and go, what if I did this, with this material, and turn it into something completely different and new.” Said Harper.
Anderson and Harper met at Perseverance Theater.
“We met 21 years ago, Kathleen was a props master and a stage manager, and I was a young carpenter,” Anderson said.
Bo Anderson is known for his works that gained a local following through the museum’s free little art gallery.
“He was very famous in our free little art gallery for a long time. He kind of took that on as one of his passions during covid.” said Weigel, “So people have come to know his little sketches.”
The museum will also serve as a drop-off site for the Southeast Alaska Food Bank during Gallery Walk. Visitors are encouraged to bring canned goods and other nonperishable items.
“We’ve got some milk crates there, and you can bring in cans of food.” Weigel said, “It’ll be easy just to carry that along in your purse on the trolley when you come up and drop that into the containers, and then we send that off to the Southeast Alaska Food Bank, because everybody’s wanting to make sure that we get everybody fed this holiday season.”
Along with Art Scraps, both artists will lead workshops in December. Anderson will host a drop-in “sketch with Bo” session on Dec. 6, and Harper will teach participants how to craft roses from coffee filters on Dec. 20.
Gallery Walk festivities at the museum run from 4:30 to 7 p.m. tonight.
Parking will also be easier in the downtown core this evening, paid parking downtown will not be enforced and enforcement will end at 3 p.m. for the evening.
On-street parking will not be limited to two hours, and free parking will be offered at the Shopper’s Lot, the North Franklin Lot, the Downtown Transportation Center Garage, the Marine Parking Garage, the Whittier Lot and the South Franklin Docks & Harbors lots.
