A big blue house on Monastery Street in Sitka has been the subject of more attention than usual. That’s thanks to an 11-1/2 foot tall totem pole displayed on sawhorses in the front yard. It is one of many of the totem poles around town, but this one is a bit different. It features two figures who have been in the headlines a lot in Alaska: Governor Mike Dunleavy and President Donald Trump.

“We’re calling it a ridicule pole, a shame pole, for our governor of Alaska, Dunleavy, and our president of the United States, Donald Trump,” says Tommy Joseph, Tlingit master carver. 

Joseph has carved many of the totem poles around town, but none of them is quite like this work. “Not really flattering images, but we’re trying to make a point,” Joseph says.

President Trump’s likeness is carved at the base of the pole in a white button-down, black suit jacket, and his signature cardinal-red tie. His eyes are spots of black against washed out pale skin. He holds a pacifier in his right hand, another in his mouth, and a bone spur coming out of his left foot. 

“He says he doesn’t have a racist bone in his body but he has a racist bone spur there, that’s just what I see and feel,” says Joseph. He depicted Governor Dunleavy as crows on the pole with small beady eyes, another red tie, and blush pink lips. 

He started working on the pole last Friday with his partner, Kristina Cranston. The couple decided to carve this one after Governor Mike Dunleavy vetoed the state operating budget last month, eliminating funding for the State Council on the Arts, cutting funding for the University of Alaska, and much more. Alaska is now the only state in the union without a State Council on the Arts. 

The pole catches the eye of many people walking up and down Monastery Street. They stop to talk with Tommy or Kristina about the project. Rain washes the tweets written in chalk off the pole periodically throughout the day.  

“They’ll start to  chuckle and laugh or it gives them an odd emotional feeling,” Joseph says. He left out a bucket for community members, and visitors, to leave suggestions. Unintentionally, it has turned into a donation bucket: people leaving cash to support the project, which Joseph would like to see travel throughout the state. He has his sights set on Juneau for a next stop. 

Joseph and Cranston are still working on some details, like fingernails and ear canals. But between them is one another unique element: two Twitter birds and a dialogue box painted in chalkboard paint. Chalk sits on one of the sawhorses so passersby can update the pole with the latest “news,” in response to President Trump’s Twitter obsession. 

“It’s incredible, the stuff he gives you,” Joseph said.

The budget cuts concern Joseph and Cranston on a personal and institutional level. He has already lost work thanks to the elimination of the State Council on the Arts. And the piece of wood he chose to carve the pole on was no accident. The piece of wood he and Kristina carved was the back slab to the totem pole at Pacific High School from several years ago. 

And that project?

“These were all public art programs that funding comes through places like Alaska State Council on the Arts,” Joseph said.

A previous version of this article referred to Kristina Cranston as Christina Joseph. This version has been correct. KCAW regrets the error.

Sitkans gathered to drape the totem pole outside Pacific High School in black cloth on Wednesday morning. It was part of a statewide “Public Art Black Out.” Artists and organizers dressed in black and covered public monuments with black cloth to protest the elimination of the State Council on the Arts, funding for public broadcasting, and public education. KCAW covered the widespread implications of those cuts in recent reporting.

The top of the Raven Shark totem pole lies in Totem Hall at Sitka National Historical Park. (Emily Russell/KCAW)

The totem pole is an icon of the Pacific Northwest. The carved artform showcases clan stories and family crests in museums around the world. After more than 30 years in the Anchorage Museum, a century-old pole from Southeast has made it back to Sitka, where curators are prepping a permanent home.

Downloadable audio.

It’s a little echoey inside Totem Hall at Sitka National Historical Park. That’s because the ceilings are about 30 feet high. Sun is streaming through the windows today, but it’s pretty cold in here.

SNHP’s Chief of Interpretation Angie Richman and Curator Kelsey Lutz . (Emily Russell/KCAW)

“The environment in here really mirrors the outside environment,” explains the park’s museum curator Kelsey Lutz. “We do not have any heat or humidification going on in this part of the facility.”

Lutz oversees the park’s collection of more than 30 totem poles. Most of them are outside along the park’s trail system. The oldest ones, though, are stored inside Totem Hall.

“They are used to being outside in that wet, cool environment, so this is really perfect for the wood,” Lutz says.

Poles tower over us, so tall you have to crane your neck to see the tops of them. There is one, though, that you actually have to look down to see. Lutz invites me back to take a look.

“Feel free to come back here,” Lutz says.

A couple of bright orange traffic cones work as dividers between the pole and museum patrons. Behind them lies a totem pole separated into two sections.

“The Raven Shark that has come back is the original pole,” explains Angie Richman.

Richman is the Chief of Interpretation at the park. The Raven Shark pole at our feet was carved in Klawock over one hundred years ago. Richman says it was donated to Alaska’s governor at the time.

“So a year after it was donated it went to St. Louis for the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, also known as the World’s Fair,” says Richman.

The replica of the Raven Shark pole was carved by Tommy Jimmie in 1978 and placed along Totem Trail Loop. (Emily Russell/KCAW)

It was also shown at the World’s Fair in Oregon in 1905, brought back to Sitka for a few decades and then went back out on the road for the New York World’s Fair in 1964.

“And in 1978, due to the deterioration,” Richman says, “that’s when it was taken off the trail and moved inside.”

And it’s been inside ever since, most recently in the atrium of the Anchorage Museum, where the pole stood on display for thirty years.

Around the time the original was moved inside, a replica of the Raven Shark pole was carved and folded into the forest along Totem Trail.

The trail loops around the coastline and sometimes there’s a break in the trees, where the Raven Shark replica pole stands. You can see out on the ocean and it’s just spectacular.

Wet snow is falling and forming puddles on the trail today.  I’m here with Tommy Joseph. He’s a Tlingit wood carver originally from Ketchikan.

“My first opportunity to work with a knife on a piece of wood was in the third grade– 8 years old,” Joseph says.

Since then, Joseph says he’s carved 40 or so full-size totem poles– he stopped counting after 30.

“Totem poles, well they’re a visual tool for telling a story– somebody’s story– about who they are, where they’re from, what they’re all about. Some are grave markers or mortuary memorial poles,” Joseph explains.

Tlingit carver Tommy Joseph with the Centennial Pole he carved for the park’s 100th anniversary. (Emily Russell/KCAW)

Others are commemorative, like the centennial pole Joseph carved for Sitka National Historical Park’s 100th anniversary. But as Joseph says, they all tell stories. The Raven Shark’s is one of two Tlingit clans–the Raven and Shark clans.

Since its carving over a century ago, the pole has told that story to onlookers around the country, but curator Kelsey Lutz says this will be it’s final home.

It could be a few months before the pole stands upright in Totem Hall. Until then, Lutz says, they’ll focus on the pole’s presentation.

“Well hopefully we’ll upgrade the traffic cones to something more museum-appropriate,” Lutz says.

T.J. Young chips away at the cedar log, shaping the canoe at Sitka National Historical Park. (Brielle Schaeffer/KCAW Photo)

For the next few months carvers will be working at Sitka National Historical Park — but not on one of the park’s famous totem poles. As part of the National park Service’s centennial, the Sealaska Heritage Institute has commissioned a traditional canoe. The sponsors hope the project allows visitors to look into the past, while the carvers perpetuate this craft into the future.

Downloadable audio.

Carving a canoe takes lots of trial and error. It’s kind of like a metaphor for life.

Just ask master carver Steve Brown. He says he learned how to do it through lots of mistakes.

“A person could think up other ways to do it but we found over the years generally speaking the old timers had it figured out and they did it their way for a number of reasons and you don’t necessarily know what all those reasons are until you do it that way,” he said. “We can think up other techniques to make that work but they won’t be as efficient in the big picture as in the old, traditional way.”

He’s teaching his apprentices Tommy Joseph, Jerrod and Nick Galanin, all of Sitka, and T.J. Young of Hydaburg, how to add by taking away. This some 5,000 pound, 28-foot red-cedar log is being transformed into a boat, one wood chip at a time.

Steve Brown shows Jerrod Galanin where to cut the log with a chainsaw. (Brielle Schaeffer/KCAW photo)

But there’s more to it than carving. The artists also use a technique called steaming, once the bottom of the boat is carved and the inside is hollowed out.

“We’re going to fill the boat up with water and we’re going to have a huge fire and we’re going to put in rocks and get them red hot,” Jerrod Galanin said. “Once they’re red hot you put them in the water inside the boat and we’ll keep it covered. It’s basically steaming. It allows the wood to bend. We’re going to widen up the sides of the boat.”

That method will be able to stretch the wood more than a foot. Galanin says he wanted to learn how to make this type of canoe because it is so special to the region.

“Tlingit people, Haida people are tied to the land and this is our technique, our methods,” he said. “We utilize what’s around us and this is our style of boat, you can’t go anywhere else in Alaska and build this kind of boat.”

Apprentice Young says he wants to learn the craft because it’s so important to his culture.

“Sometimes you have to stop and look back in order to move forward,” he said.

Brown has been carving canoes for decades, something he started learning on the Makah Indian Reservation in Washington state. He says he often gets asked how a non-Native learned the art of canoe carving. To answer that question, he likes to tell a story about working with his Makah teacher.

The work site. (Brielle Schaeffer/KCAW photo)

“He said some of the people in his community had asked him how come he decided to work with a white man. He said, ‘It’s true historically white people were largely responsible for the unraveling of our culture. And therefor it’s right for some of them to put it back together.’ I’m attempting to help put it back together,” Brown said.

He’s learning from the process, too.

Sealaska Heritage Institute donated the red-cedar log from Prince of Wales Island. It was the best tree for the job, Brown says, but it got a big crack when it fell to the ground. The carvers have to cut out the split part in the center and add new wood.

“A person can get spoiled working on really nice trees so it’s good to know how to deal with one that isn’t so perfect,” he said.

The crack will add time to the process but the carvers hope to be done in May.

Visitors can stop by the outdoor workshop at Sitka National Historical Park to see the canoe in progress and talk to the carvers. They are at work daily between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m.

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Four armed, armored figures display Tlingit war gear created by Sitka’s Tommy Joseph as part of the Alaska State Museum’s “Rainforest Warriors” exhibit. It’s one of three Alaska shows tourists will see this season. Click here to watch a slideshow from the exhibit and Kay Field Parker’s “Playing with Lightning.”

http://www.kcaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/29Cruise-L.mp3

Alaska State Museum Exhibit Curator Jackie Manning is confronted by some imposing figures every time she enters its main gallery.

They’re well-armed, well-armored mannequins, displaying years of carving by Sitka Tlingit artist Tommy Joseph.

“And when you first walk in, you’re met by all six of them and they‘re up and they have this presence that I think really gives you the sense of what it would be like to encounter these warriors in life,” she says.

She points to one of the figures, with an abalone-eyed helmet, shelled, protective neck gear and the historic equivalent of a kevlar vest.

“Every time I see it, it leaves quite the impression because it’s fully dressed with the slat armor and the collar and the tunic and the bow and the arrow as well as the dagger. It’s just such a beautiful example of all of the armor on one figure,” she says.

The Marten Helmet, part of the “Rainforest Warriors” exhibit. Click here watch a slideshow from the exhibit, as well as Kay Field Parker’s “Playing with Lightning.”

The museum is a popular Juneau tourist destination, catering to cruise-ship passengers and independent travelers, as well as locals.

It, and other parts of the tourist industry, will likely see more people visit the state this year. Larger cruise ships are on their way, bringing visitors through Southeast and across the Gulf of Alaska. Many tourists continue north, riding and flying to the Railbelt and on to places north and west.

This season’s visitors to the state museum will also view Juneau’s Kay Field Parker’s Ravenstail weaving and Sitka’s Nicholas Galanin’s contemporary Tlingit-Aleut art.

“I think the three shows really work together very well and are going to give our all of our visitors a great impression of the kind of artwork that’s done in Alaska,” she says.

The museum is but one of hundreds of attractions and excursions ready for Alaska’s 2013 tourist season.

“It looks excellent,” says John Binkley, president of the Alaska Cruise Association, which represents Princess, Holland America and other large-ship lines sailing Alaska waters.

“It looks like this will be the first time since 2009 that we’ll get back above the 1 million mark for cruise visitors coming to Alaska.”

He says the ships will bring nearly 70,000 more visitors north this season.

They’ll come aboard 28 large ships, one more than last year. And three lines will send larger vessels than last year, making close to 500 separate voyages.

“The indications that we’ve gotten are that the prices are holding steady, which means that there’s less discounting and usually people who are a little more affluent are coming to Alaska. That should be good news for retail merchants as well as those who have shore excursions that hopefully people purchase when they get off the ship,” Binkley says.

“The industry is cautiously optimistic that it will be a great summer and total visitor season,” adds Sarah Leonard, president of the Alaska Travel Industry Association, a statewide tour-business group.

“Last summer we know that visitors reached 1.8 million in Alaska. And that was the first increase we saw in over four years. And then with some new … airline service and new cruise-ship berths, we see positive growth,” Leonard says.

Back at the Alaska State Museum, dozens of Kay Field Parker’s ravenstail weavings are on exhibit, in a summer show called “Playing with Lightning.”

Leggings from the “Playing with Lightning” exhibit.

“Lightning is one of the patterns, a triangle pattern that repeats, but it reverses,” says Manning, the museum curator.

She describes ravenstail as highly geometric. The technique was rediscovered in the 1980s after being out of use for about two centuries. Manning says Parker’s work follows the old ways, with some variations.

“The traditional colors were white and black and yellow. And the majority of Kay’s work reflects those traditional colors. And based on materials, because they’re so hard to come by for weavers that do this kind of work, she also has some other colors she’s introduced,” she says.

This is the final summer exhibits will be on display in this aging museum. It will be torn down next year and eventually replaced with a modern structure including the state library and archives.

Meanwhile, the cruise-and-tourist season continues through late September. In addition to large-ship lines, the number of smaller tour vessels is increasing this year.