Art in the Wild

((PKG)) ART IN THE WILD  ((TRT: 10:48)) ((Topic Banner: Art in the Wild)) ((Reporter/Camera: Gabrielle Weiss))  ((Additional Camera/Drone Footage: Rafael de la Uz)) ((Map: Seldovia, Alaska))  ((Main Character: 1 female)) ((NATS/MUSIC))  ((Courtesy: Valisa Higman)) ((Valisa Higman, Artist)) I started cutting paper when I was in high school. I just played around with it for years. And then I went to college and I studied drawing. And in my third drawing class, I did a project where I ended up cutting the drawing out of black paper. And I brought it in to the professor and she was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is what you do. Like, you cut paper!’    ((NATS/MUSIC))  ((Valisa Higman, Artist)) I’m Valisa Higman and I’m a cut-paper artist in Seldovia, Alaska. We’re here at my studio. This is how I stay warm while I wait for my fire to heat up.  My dad and my grandfather built the house and the shop that I work in. It’s kind of designed to be a creative space. It was a different sort of creativity, but it feels really good for just inspiration and making things. ((NATS/MUSIC))  ((Valisa Higman, Artist)) I feel like Alaska is different than anywhere else. And having grown up here, I didn’t want anything more than to just get out. I decided I really just wanted to travel around the world and see everything and go everywhere and live somewhere with more people and more options.   ((NATS/MUSIC))  ((Valisa Higman, Artist)) My seat’s too cold to sit on yet.  The first year it was just like, everything was great, like there’s so many things to see and people to meet. But then by the second year, I started to realize that like people’s values were a lot different than mine. And so, I missed being in a place where like you have to think about things. You don’t just go buy things if they’re broken. You have to really think about what you need and what you just want.  ((NATS))  ((Valisa Higman, Artist)) Living off the highway system in rural Alaska, there’s less separation between outdoor life and indoor life. There’s definitely frustrations but it’s better to be frustrated than it is to be bored.  ((NATS/MUSIC))  ((Valisa Higman, Artist)) This is part of my Alaska Problems series, which was like First World problems but Alaska style. So, everybody had a story about bears eating things they weren’t supposed to. This was A Bear Ate My Bicycle. And this was because my dad had, I think, two bike seats eaten by bears. ((Courtesy: Valisa Higman)) They like anything that’s kind of smushy and, you know, you sweat on it a little bit, so it’s got a little salt on there. It’s really delicious. The one I really wanted to do is when your doors are frozen and you can’t get into your car. I mean really, you just like sit there and pull on the door until you figure out how to get it open because there’s not really anything you can do. There were the two sides of the coin. ((Courtesy: Valisa Higman)) You wake up in the morning and it’s so cold you just can’t get out of your bed. And then you do. You get out of bed and you go make your fire and then it gets so hot in your house ((Courtesy: Valisa Higman)) that you are boiling. This one was another one in that series. So, this one is fishing, and you get all the bugs ((Courtesy: Valisa Higman)) around your head and it’s like a halo.  ((NATS/MUSIC))  ((Courtesy: Valisa Higman)) ((Valisa Higman, Artist)) I live about three miles [4.8km] out of town up on the side of a mountain. I guess when I made the decision to move back to Alaska, it was partly influenced by my parents getting older. My brother had moved back and had a family, so he had a couple kids. We got most of the family up here. My dad used to refer to it as ‘The Compound’, so. That shed there is my mom’s kiln shed. So her house, my room, outhouse and then my brother’s house is just down the hill. His house and the washhouse have running water, but up here, we have to carry our water up. ((NATS/MUSIC))  ((Valisa Higman, Artist)) So, this is where I live. It’s not very big. The printer is a very important part of my business. So, I have to have, like it gets lots of counter space. And then when I paint, I often just sit cross-legged on my bed. I cook at my mom’s house and then my whole family eats dinner together at my brother’s house. Having my studio space is essential, like I use that for all the things that you need extra space for. So, I can do yoga in my studio. I can’t do it here. There’s not enough room. I’m pretty cozy in bed but it can be pretty chilly in the morning when I’m getting up. I have an outlet that I can plug my heater into. It’ll kick on if it goes below freezing. So, that’s usually what I do when I’m not home, just so that my printer doesn’t freeze and my paints don’t freeze, but it just keeps it at 40 degrees [4.4 Celsius].  ((NATS/MUSIC))  ((Valisa Higman, Artist)) Mom, we’re taking off. I’ll see you later. My property isn’t really connected to the road. So, I take a rowboat from the harbor and row about 20 minutes around a little headland into the cove where my studio is. ((NATS/MUSIC))  ((Valisa Higman, Artist)) I do really love my commute. You’re exposed to the elements. You’re constantly thinking about the tides and the weather. And you get really tuned into all the changing wildlife in the seasons too. Like the birds have this rhythm. I mean there are certain birds that are here all year round, but there’s other ones that show up first thing in the spring and they’re one of the first signs that the weather’s going to change and the light’s coming back. Or there’s certain birds that show up in the fall and it’s that first sign that things are going to get colder and the days are getting shorter. ((NATS/MUSIC))  ((Valisa Higman, Artist)) When you’re rowing, you’re facing backwards. So, you end up getting closer to wildlife than you maybe intend to. ((NATS/MUSIC))  ((Valisa Higman, Artist)) Special escape hatch/place to put my tea leaves. It is a potential escape hatch in case one of my three doors in the one room of my shop are blocked during a fire, I can get out through the floor, or in the case of a zombie apocalypse. I’m willing to use any tools available to get the results I want. So, it’s kind of a no rules medium. I start with a piece of black paper. I have a drawing that I transfer onto that black paper. And I cut away everything except for the lines. So, I’m left with like a thin lacework of black lines. And then I’ll piece together different kind of papers with different textures and different colors. I work from front to back in the image, so whatever is in the foreground I have to do first. So, you can see when you look at a finished piece what’s closest to the viewer and what’s farther away.  ((NATS/MUSIC))  ((Valisa Higman, Artist)) I think everybody wants to tell you how you can make more money. And that’s not the point. Making more money isn’t the point. I need to make enough money, but I don’t need to make more. I just need to get by. It’s hard to convince people that what I do is work because they think I’m just here doing what I want, right? Like if you’re doing what you love, then obviously it’s not work. So, I get lots of job offers and lots of suggestions of what I should do. I’m like, ‘Why would I do that? I’m doing fine. I’m making a living as an artist. What could I ask for? This is great.’ ((NATS/MUSIC))  ((Courtesy: Valisa Higman)) ((Valisa Higman, Artist)) I started a series of Alaskan fairy tales. I did an Alaskan Little Mermaid, Alaskan Cinderella, and Jack and the Beanstalk, which was Jack and the Pushki Stalk. ((NATS/MUSIC))  ((Valisa Higman, Artist)) Through conversations with friends and family and stuff like that, we kind of talked about the different fairy tales and what would that fairy tale be like if it was in Alaska. And so, one of the ones that was really striking to me was Goldilocks and the Three Bears and maybe partly because this year, we had an insane number of black bears in town, and they got into all sorts of mischief. ((Courtesy: Valisa Higman)) And so, Goldilocks and the Three Bears is about a mischievous girl that breaks into a bear’s house. But we all know that in Alaska, it would be mischievous bears breaking into people’s house. So, Goldilocks is out chopping firewood and she comes home to absolute chaos. ((NATS/MUSIC))  ((Valisa Higman, Artist)) I’m always looking for inspiration in the world around me. So, I like the way people interact with the environment. Having my niece and nephew here and watching them grow up, it’s been really fun.  ((NATS/MUSIC))  ((Valisa Higman, Artist))  There you go.  ((Katmai Higman, Nephew))  Okay, yeah. We got a lot. ((Valisa Higman, Artist))  Oh, it’s got a gunnel. Look. It’s a gunnel with eggs. Two gunnels. I want to share pretty things with people. Like I want to make beautiful things. ((NATS/MUSIC))  ((Valisa Higman, Artist))  Is that a skeleton shrimp? Woops. Now he’s gone. ((Valisa Higman, Artist))  I have all this beauty around me. I want to be able to send that out into the world and share that with people.                          ((NATS/MUSIC))