Years ago, the Boys & Girls Club branded fence posts, one side with what their neighborhood meant to them, the other side, with journal entries from Bruce Farnsworth. The fence stood in Spenard for some time, and after being taken down, the planks were stored at The Nave. They called on Bruce and I to revive the pieces with a new installation in a back stairwell of The Nave, with pretty much free-reign on the project. On the left wall is a journal entry written by Bruce, which reads “The bigness of Alaska makes us feel lost the way looking up at the stars makes some of us feel like we’re going insane. But it’s the very bigness that seems to account for the constant bumping into ourselves that Alaskans experience. Large surrounding spaces create a kind of psychic miniaturization. When the distances between ourselves and everyone else is great, the compactness of our interior becomes exaggerated—forms a solitude of expanse where we run into our own pettiness and cowardice at every turn.”
The rest of the piece is a collection of the other side of the posts- what the Boys and Girls club saw their neighborhood as. The center is a blackboard where you can add what your neighborhood means to you.
Kerby helped us a ton with the carpentry and installation, and being able to work with Bruce (a legendary artist here in Anchorage) was such a gift.
FROM THE NAVE (referring to the last photograph):
“Last week, The Nave was honored to host the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska for five days of Art & Culture Classes. Written and left on the 'My Neighborhood Is' chalkboard installation within The Nave, this beautiful poem speaks for itself.
Text:
"I feel pain in my body
when I grasp at my culture
my muscles brace at centuries
old blows from boarding
schools ∞ + more
I grasp at the strands +
braid them back together
bringing two things together
that might otherwise
not be joined"
~eternal weave 2023
Chin'an; Gunalchéesh, Háw'aa; Thank you to Tlingit & Haida artists, neighbors, and relatives, for gathering here in Spenard. We love you!
Special thanks to instructor Rae Mills for granting permission to share this poem.”