Photo courtesy of ARTSpace Alaska This undated lithograph by Jim Evenson is titled "Setting the Net."

Photo courtesy of ARTSpace Alaska This undated lithograph by Jim Evenson is titled "Setting the Net."

Evenson lithographs collected in limited-edition book

A new limited-edition book portrays the long artistic career of Nikiski homesteader, commercial fisherman, and lithographer Jim Evenson with 50 images Evenson chose as favorites.

50 copies of the signed, coffee-table size books have been commissioned by art-supporting nonprofit ARTSpace Soldotna, which plans to establish a scholarship for Kenai Peninsula College art students on behalf of Jim and his wife Nedra Evenson.

The Chicago-born Jim Evenson served in the U.S Navy before art at Grinnell College and the University of Iowa. He came to Kenai with Nedra in the summer of 1955. Evenson originally planned to keep his art teaching job at Cornell University while escaping to Alaska to commercial fish in the summer. Instead, he and Nedra moved to a homestead on the shore of Nikiski’s Bishop Lake. Evenson spent winters teaching art at Kenai Central High School and drift-netted Cook Inlet in the summer.

ADVERTISEMENT
0 seconds of 0 secondsVolume 0%
Press shift question mark to access a list of keyboard shortcuts
00:00
00:00
00:00
 

Commercial fishing provided Evenson with imagery for many of his pieces — or in some, provided him with forms he used to express his sense of line and color. In several prints, the solid shapes of boats sail amid clouds that merge with the sea in whirled compositions that seem to embody both at once. Abstraction and representation co-exist in many of his works, and one occasionally becomes the other — as in “Evening Sky,” where antennae, masts, ladders, and rigging silhouetted against a blue gradient make a formalist mesh of black lines.

Other themes appear within the collection’s 50 prints — among them Evenson’s Christianity and the Kenai Peninsula’s homesteading past — though many don’t contain recognizable objects at all, but only the wild motion of line.

“I’m not after one thing,” Evenson said. “I’m not primarily an artist to make money… I’ve been in a few galleries, but when I do a work of art, it’s something I want to do for myself. Whether I sell it or not is beside the point. If I was really a commercial artist I’d find something that sold and keep repeating it over and over, and I don’t really do that.”

Lithography works through the mutual repulsion of oil and water. A lithographer draws an image on a smooth stone (in Evenson’s case, a slab of German limestone or Italian marble) with a hydrophobic oil or wax. An acid treatment etches the areas of the stone not protected by the drawing material, allowing them to hold water. A layer of oil-based ink rolled over the stone is repulsed by the wet areas and concentrates instead above the original drawn lines, where it is picked up by a piece of paper pressed into the stone. The technique was developed in the 1790s in Germany and is still used to print newspapers in addition to remaining popular with artists.

For the Evensons, lithography is teamwork.

“When we work at the press, he works on one side of the press and I work on the other,” Nedra said. “He does the inking and the determining how much pressure he wants on it and so on. I work on the other side of the press and I do the clean work. I register the prints and remove them, and stack them from the press so we can compare them for similarities.”

Jim and Nedra printed his images in relatively small editions of between 10 to 30 copies.

“That makes them more exclusive, and secondly there’s no reason to print a hundred if you’re only going to want 20,” Nedra said. “The paper’s very expensive.”

Once a print comes off the press, Nedra numbers and files it according to a system she created. She estimated the two of them had printed about 150 editions in their Bishop Lake studio, where many of their prints remain. When ARTSpace director Joe Kashi visited the studio recently, she said he “was four hours in two of the flat drawers — it took him that long to look at the various (prints).”

Kashi said the coffee-table book of Evenson’s work had originally been printed to help the couple register a copyright on Jim’s work. Kashi, an attorney by profession, occasionally leads copyright workshops for artists. Registering a copyright with the U.S Library of Congress requires submitting non-returnable copies of a piece. Kashi said print-on-demmand art books are a good medium for submitting large bodies of work. 20 copies of the Evenson collection where originally printed in 2014 for that purpose, and for distribution to friends and family.

This year the Soldotna Rotary Club paid for the printing of the additional fundraising books, which will sell for $250 each to help fund ARTSpace. The group will sell them at their annual art show and sale, held this Saturday at the Soldotna Public Library.

ARTSpace will also be fundraising for the Evenson scholarship they hope to establish. Kashi said that University of Alaska’s minimum scholarship endowment is $25,000, which he hopes to raise by selling 8-foot-by-4-foot reproductions of Evenson’s lithographs, sold for $2000. These mural-sized prints, Kashi said, will be designed for outside walls and targeted toward businesses or public buildings, “particularly the commercial fishing-themed and the Old Kenai-themed images,” Kashi said.

Reach Ben Boettger at ben.boettger@peninsulaclarion.com.

Photo courtesy of ARTSpace Soldotna This undated lithograph by Jim Evenson is titled "Evening Sky."

Photo courtesy of ARTSpace Soldotna This undated lithograph by Jim Evenson is titled “Evening Sky.”

More in Life

Salmonfest-goers crowd in front of the Ocean Stage during Blackwater Railroad’s performance on Saturday, Aug. 2, at the Kenai Peninsula Fairgrounds in Ninilchik. (Delcenia Cosman/Homer News)
Celebrating salmon, art and culture

Salmonfest was held in Ninilchik last weekend, featuring music, community and advocacy.

Former Homer News Editor-in-chief Michael Armstrong poses for a photograph Oct, 26, 2024, in Wilmington, Vermont. (Photo by Janet Shook/courtesy)
Aging Gracefully: Write your own story

One unfortunate aspect of aging is that the number of memorial services you attend begins to exceed weddings.

Author Naomi Klouda poses for a photo in this undated photograph. (Photo courtesy of Naomi Klouda)
Local author Naomi Klouda publishes dictionary for Alaska’s glaciers

Naomi Klouda was working as the editor of the Tundra Drums weekly… Continue reading

These childhood favorites are certainly not healthy, but they’re made with more wholesome ingredients than their drive-through equivalents. (Photo by Tressa Dale/Peninsula Clarion)
Chicken nuggets for the soul

This childhood classic is made with organic chicken breast and wholesome spices.

A small placard provides context and the traditional, indigenous names of a Kenai Birch tree in the Pratt Museum Botanical Garden on Friday, July 25. The Kenai Birch is a hybrid species only present on the Kenai Peninsula. (Chloe Pleznac/Homer News)
Out of the office and under the trees

Throughout this summer, the Pratt has offered guided tours centered on the “science and spirit of the forest.”

File
Minister’s Message: ‘Bed rotting’

There’s not much worse than sleeping your life away.

Posing in front of Steve Melchior’s cabin on the Killey River in 1912 are (left) packer/cook Ferdinand “Fritz” Posth and hunting guide William “Wild Bill” Dewitt, with two trophy Dall sheep heads. (Photo from E. Marshall Scull’s 1914 hunting memoir, “Hunting in the Arctic and Alaska”)
Steve Melchior: Treasured peninsula pioneer with a sketchy past — Part 4

Steve Melchior seemed to disappear, perhaps on purpose.

Vanessa Kirby is Sue Storm, Pedro Pascal is Reed Richards, Joseph Quinn is Johnny Storm and Ebon Moss-Bachrach is Ben Grimm in “Fantastic Four: First Steps.” (Promotional image courtesy Marvel Studios)
On the Screen: New ‘Fantastic Four’ falls short of superb

This new take on “Fantastic Four” is totally fine.

"Musical Chair" is a photograph by Amaia Nicole Crain, with model Alisa Sonne, on display through August in her solo photography exhibit at Homer Council on the Arts. Photo provided by Homer Council on the Arts
August First Friday in Homer

Summer is in full swing and Homer’s galleries and public art spaces are abuzz with artists showcasing new and ongoing work.

Most Read