It all started back in 2017 across the country in Burlington, VT, at an empty-walled apartment on Hungerford Terrace. What began during curator Ryan McHale’s college years as a way to bring art and creativity to his space has grown and evolved over the past decade to the point of inspiring a gallery that is now changing Ketchikan’s art scene.
McHale continues to host what he calls the The Hungerford Art Gallery (The HAG) as a one night pop-up gallery from his apartment. He removes everything from the walls to create a blank canvas, allowing guests to bring their artwork and install it however they like on the walls, floors, and ceiling inside or outside. They label it with blue tape and a sharpie. “We then do a gallery tour where each person has a chance to talk about what they brought and everyone else can ask questions and interpret the piece,” McHale said.”Each year ends up being completely unique, shaped by who shows up and what they choose to share. I think we had over 30 people participate last year.”
Spanning a wide array of disciplines, this annual tradition has followed him across the country from Vermont to Alaska and has since taken root in his Ketchikan apartment. He has seen people bring everything from doodles and beadwork to short films and construction plans.
This last year, however, McHale alongside cofounder Jason Baldwin brought the heart and soul behind The HAG to a new level with their newest brainchild: [Insert Art], located in downtown Ketchikan and a project of the Ketchikan Area Arts and Humanities Council. A residency program and space for emerging artists in town, [Insert Art] is part studio, part gallery, and part community gathering space that is redefining what community-driven arts can and should look like here in Southeast Alaska.
“The idea behind all of this is that art is for everyone and everyone is an artist,” said McHale. “Art is for all and we wanted to do something that wasn’t so mainstream, and that would reduce the barriers to accessing art, interpreting art and (displaying art).”
A community-wide labor of love, [Insert Art] is a project supported by nearly every artist in town. A large work bench in the studio was donated by Sign Pro, a local sign shop. The back room is full of donated matte-board and framing supplies, packing supplies donated from Brandon Hoyt of Scanlon Gallery & Custom Framing, and McHale mentioned at length the advice and support that’s been offered by established artists in town like Evon Zerbetz, Ray Troll, and Grace Freeman.
Each year, the first of which has just concluded, [Insert Art] brings in a cohort of artists from town who can use the space to create work, host group exhibits, sell their art, and lead public-facing workshops.
“It’s a shared studio space for artists, and the idea behind that, too, is that they get 24/7 access to the space,” McHale says. “They’re not paying rent, everything is covered.”
“Ketchikan has a finite amount of space and we want to make sure that emerging artists have a space where they can come and kickstart their career,” Baldwin added.
The first space of its kind in Southeast Alaska, a big part of the mission has been to cut down the financial barriers that make careers in the arts difficult – something McHale and Baldwin say have become more burdensome over the last few decades as the landscape around town has changed and costs have risen.
“(In the 70s), Ketchikan had an old hospital downtown that was (used as) studio spaces for artists, and had old waterfront storage, which is now Berth 4, and all of these artists had this environment where they were paying dirt cheap rent and had community with other artists in the building,” McHale says. “There was this collaboration and ability to just pop up and see another artist working, (…) and that’s the environment that we are trying to create here with [Insert Art].”
Beaux Fletcher
“I am, I guess, somewhat new to printmaking. When I moved to Ketchikan is when I first really started getting into it,” said Beaux Fletcher, one of two printmaking residents from this year’s cohort. “I learned about the Blueberry Festival when I moved here, and I had just made my first lino cut and thought it was addicting. I ended up making five or six different designs and my partner Mads,” who is also in this year’s cohort, “and I set up a blueberry booth and we sold all our prints over there. It’s just kind of been nonstop since.”
Perched in [Insert Art] is an etching press that came from local artist Mary Ida Henrickson who invited Fletcher and their partner to begin using the press while it was still living in her basement.
“She gave us a demonstration and let us use supplies and inks, and we just got to experiment,” Fletcher said of that period. “That next winter I was basically always just in that basement printing. Eventually we bought the press off of her because we loved it so much and decided to put it in here because we knew that [Insert Art] was going to be a collective with some other artists – though we didn’t know who it would be yet. At the time, we just knew we needed to share this with people, and I’m really excited to show people how to use it and for it to get more use.”
Fletcher has been experimenting with printmaking harvested plantlife onto clothing, upcycling old clothing with natural designs. For them, [Insert Art] has provided the space for the collaboration they crave in their practice.
“There are so many artists in Ketchikan, but there’s not really that many spaces where we can just go do our work and talk about it,” they said. “It’s just really fun to get to ask people their opinions on a piece or to totally pick other artists’ brains. Having other people do work around you is so inspiring, and just makes me want to do more.”
Time in this space has come to mirror exactly the type of community McHale and Baldwin were hoping to recreate in Ketchikan once again.
“I have met so many more artists just through being here,” said Fletcher. “We are kind of like hermits as artists, so we’re coming out of the woodwork to meet in a little space like this and get to chat. I feel like there’s so many more connections that have been made between all of us here, and I’ve met so many printmakers through [Insert Art] who hear about the press and want to come.”
Group Exhibits
Alongside Beaux Fletcher, the first year cohort also included Savannah LeCornu, Kelly Reamer, Shannon Slagle and Mads Wolf. Collectively, the five artists shared the space, led workshops, and hosted three collaborative exhibits as a group.
“I feel like our exhibits have felt really special,” Fletcher said. “Everytime, there was always that crunch week where we were all stressed, but then we would get it up and on our opening night our pieces looked so neat. Watching us grow as a group together and see how our pieces looked next to each other at the final exhibit versus the very first exhibit was really, really interesting. It’s just been such a fun learning experience.”
The first exhibit that the group agreed upon was titled “Deconstruction,” and they pulled prints and artwork that they didn’t think was of quality to sell and shredded them before drowning them in a fish tank. The next exhibit was “Reconstruction,” where they made paper from those shredded pieces and made new works out of it and on top of it. The last and most recent exhibit, “Horny,” featured pieces celebrating and exploring sexuality and desire.
For McHale, it was important that this space serve as a sort of on-ramp for artists who, among many other things, may want to do an exhibit, but maybe don’t have the experience making a gallery lay-out or creating a proposal for an exhibit.
“This is like giving the training wheels, right?,” he said. “Providing the resources, the mentorship, so that then they can apply for an exhibit up at the Arts Council (in the future) if they want to.”
McHale used his own experience as a museum curator to teach the residents how to group, mount and hang pieces of work for an exhibit. Later he brought in Nancy Tietje, an artist and tax accountant in town, who offered the cohort a free workshop on understanding taxes as an artist. So much more than your average residency program, the two cofounders hope [Insert Art] can be a space for established artists to teach the ropes to the next generation and lower the barriers to entry that can be so difficult to overcome.
As McHale and Baldwin prepare for the second year of the [Insert Art], they’re looking forward to a new space straddling Dock and Mission Street.
“Staying downtown is really important to us. We want to continue being a space where people can gather, connect, and share ideas,” McHale said of the move. “We’re excited that our new space is just down the street, and we’ll be moving in soon.”
Learn more about [Insert Art] at ketchikanarts.org and see some of Beaux Fletcher’s work on Instagram @beauxlete. This story is the fifth installation of “Pressing Silence,” a series of feature stories on traditional printmakers in Southeast Alaska. The series is made possible in part by the Alaska Center for Excellence in Journalism’s Arts Reporting Grant.
Rachel Levy is a Juneau-based photojournalist whose work culminates at the intersections of environmental justice, arts and culture, and sustainable tourism. A 2022 graduate of Harvard University's Environmental Policy program, she is also the director of the award-winning documentary "Hidden in Plain Sight" that exposes the labor exploitation and colonial framework burdening Tanzania's safari industry.
