A woman of many skills, Judy Cooper has lead an interesting and active life.  She was born in 1939 in Cleveland, Ohio, and grew up in Madison, Wisconsin.  When 18 she entered Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and received a B.A. from there, with a major in biology and a minor in art.  The summer she graduated she went to the Michigan State University Biology Station at Gull Lake, where she took biology courses.  She attended the University of Colorado in Boulder for 2 years, where she studied botany, zoology, chemistry, and geology.

In January, 1964, she took Peace Corps training and went to Bolivia for 2 years, where she worked with the Aymara Indians at 12,000 feet above sea level on the Altiplano.  Most of the indigenous people of the Andes were conquered by the Incas.  The Aymaras, however, joined the Incas, thereby retaining their own language and culture.  Judy was involved with a community development and preventative public health program, dealing with such diseases as tuberculosis.

After her return from Bolivia, she took a job for 2 years in North Carolina with a War on Poverty Community Action program.  While she lived there she had a brain hemorrhage and was taken by ambulance to Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  She was fortunate to have one of the best neurosurgeons in the country as her doctor.  When she recovered, she returned to her job and stayed until funding was cut.  Then she returned to Wisconsin and worked in a store until she had enough money to go to Alaska.

In 1968, Judy got her first Alaskan job in Hoonah, where she directed the Parent-Child Center.  This facility took in children from birth to age 3.  Judy worked with the parents and the children.  After 2 1/2 years, she moved to Juneau, where she worked for Parks and Recreation in an after-school program for street kids.  Judy took them on camping trips and hikes, and they learned about appropriate behavior and safety in the mountains.

In 1972, Judy joined Local 941, Laborers International Union of North America, and went to Anchorage to learn how to do heavy construction.  As many workers had left to work on the pipeline, local jobs were available. She did jobs that were unusual for a woman.

Finally, Judy got a job on the pipeline itself.  She first worked with an insulation crew, claiming she is the only person who has ever crossed the Yukon River twice on her back.  She worked on the underside of the pipe, squirting sealant into seams.

Judy’s pipeline jobs were in Prudhoe Bay and North Pole.  On several jobs, she spent hours as a flagger, by herself in the middle of nowhere.  She played soccer with rocks to stay awake.  She also learned how to talk to the ravens.  She and the raven would have contests to see who could make the funniest noises.

At North Pole, Alaska, Judy worked at the refinery as the only woman on a crew of 6, spending 8 to 10 hours a day unloading gravel from a dump truck into a wheelbarrow, then shoveling it into dish-shaped retainers around the oil storage tanks.  One man on the team remarked, “I never thought a woman could work so hard.”

The pipeline was finished in 1977.  Judy went on a cross-country ski trip, following Cliff Lobaugh, veterinarian for Juneau and the Yukon. They skied from a cabin on Atlin Lake to the Taku arm of Tagish Lake and back.  Cliff, a big man, moved fast on his skis, and Judy couldn’t keep up, partly because she kept stopping to take pictures.  On such skiing trips, she always took a dog with her.  Finally, she hitched herself to the dog, and kept up easily.  On Tagish Lake, Cliff introduced her to a woman with a dog team, giving Judy a chance to see what mushing was like.  As the mushers like to say, “She caught the bug, and she was hooked.”

She bought a cabin in Tagish, Yukon Territory, spending winter months there and running sled dogs.  She started with 3 or 4 dogs, and went from being pulled by a dog while on skis (called “skijoring,” from a Norwegian word) to mushing.

Judy decided she would move to Fairbanks, so she could have a garden.  She settled in Two Rivers, close to Fairbanks, and known as the mushing capitol of the world.  While in Two Rivers, her dogs multiplied, until at one time she had 52 animals.  (As the number of dogs increased, it was harder to keep track of dogs in heat, so a couple of accidental litters pushed the total higher.)  She kept and trained all of them.  As the mushing trails started from her yard, she would take dogs on runs most days from the house, starting training in winter.  By early spring, they would have enough stamina to go on a long trip.  She would use a different team every day, 8 dogs to a team.  Thus they all got exercise.

Judy is fascinated with animal behavior.  She says, “to ask a dog to do something, you have to figure out how to motivate him.”  She loves dogs and loves raising puppies, and tries to train them all so they perform to the best of their abilities.  She worked up to running them 10 to 18 miles a day.  Racing mushers would ask her, “How many miles do you have on your dogs so far?”  She didn’t keep track, because she had no means to measure distances.  She just kept working them until they reached their distance goal.

In March and April she took trips with a friend to the White Mountains, a BLM recreational area with cabins spaced a few miles apart.  They would rent different cabins so they could run the dogs between them.  Sometimes getting to places could be difficult because of the weather.  Creeks would be overflowing.  The trail was not flat, but slanted, and the sled slid off it sideways.  To counteract this slide, the musher had to stand on the uphill runner of the sled and lean uphill, much like on a sailboat.

One winter, Judy and a mushing friend from Haines went on a trip to a small fishing resort on Tagish Lake.  The Haines friend brought her team and a basket sled, so Judy decided to use hers as well, instead of the toboggan sled, a decision she later regretted.  The toboggan sled has a large piece of plastic on the bottom, which allows it to ride on top of the snow.  The basket sled has narrow runners that dig into the snow.

The pair left from the town of Atlin at about 10:00 a.m.  They crossed Atlin Lake and then crossed the isthmus onto the Taku arm of Tagish Lake.  Everything looked fine when they started the trip, and Judy felt confident they’d get there with no problem.  She knew the route very well, since she had traveled it many times.

When they made it across the isthmus, the trail suddenly disappeared.  The wind had blown the snow into deep drifts, and no one had been over the trail since the storm.  Though weather conditions remained okay, the lead dogs struggled to break trail through the drifts.  After floundering in the snow for a long time, they became very tired.  The basket sleds didn’t help.  They were harder for the dogs to pull in the deep snow.  Judy would walk ahead for a distance to mark the trail, then urge the dogs forward.  They changed lead dogs, to give the original leaders a break.

Afternoon turned into a winter evening.  They couldn’t camp, as they had no cooking pots and no water for the dogs.  They couldn’t start a fire, as they had nothing resembling dry wood.  After some hours of travel, they realized they could not go back, as they had progressed too far, but had to continue forward.  They could not change routes and go across Tagish Lake, as they could easily get lost in the dark and miss their friend’s place completely.  Being on the lake ice at night was very unsafe, as there were soft spots in the ice that they couldn’t see, and they could break through and plunge to the bottom.  Unfortunately, the left shore of the lake where their trail ran had received the most drifting snow, and they had no choice but to go through it.  By now it was very dark and they could just see the outlines of the large trees close by…these trees were all they had to steer by.  In the distance they spotted the light from the friend’s place, but it was still a long way off.  Stress and weariness settled in.  Every so often, Judy’s companion would ask, “Are we getting closer?”

Finally, they parked the sleds.  Judy left her friend with the dogs and sleds and walked about one-third mile to the house on her snowshoes.  Her friend there had been worried, because she knew they were coming.  When Judy finally arrived, she was so dehydrated that she drank a quart of water.  She walked back, taking water to the dogs and to her friend. After all, their very lives were dependent on the dogs’ ability to take them to safety, so she took care of them first. They hitched up, then followed Judy’s snowshoe tracks to the cabin, arriving at 4:00 in the morning.  Judy says that the simple route that she’d used so often turned into the trip from hell.  Instead of four to five hours of travel time, it took them fifteen.  They never would have made it if she weren’t so stubborn.

Her Fairbanks garden was wonderful.  She grew such vegetables as zucchini, lettuce, beets, carrots, chard, and green beans.  She tried to grow plants that the moose wouldn’t eat.  She had an added moose deterrent:  The dog kennels were spread out in 2 rows in a big circle with an alley down the middle.  The garden was planted inside the circle.  An 8-foot fence surrounded the whole area.  If the moose wanted to get to those plants,, it would have to jump the fence and go through the double row of dogs.

In Fairbanks, Judy started a B & B called Earthtone Huskies, renting mostly to summer guests.  The cabins had no running water, so she had to appeal to hardy folks who didn’t mind a somewhat primitive lifestyle.  Most guests were Europeans.  She met many interesting people.  Her guests’ fees helped pay for dog food.  Judy would take guests out for 30 to 45-minute rides with the team, which they all claimed was the highlight  of their trip.

Judy’s artwork is a reflection of the outdoor area where she lived.  While in junior high, she learned how to make linoleum block prints, and while in Hoonah, she began making Christmas cards.  Soon a business was born.  Now she makes one or two designs a year.  As her line of cards grew, she joined the Artist’s Coop in Juneau and did art shows in the fall and winter.

Here are instructions from Judy on how to make linoleum block prints:  First, you have to draw the picture.  Put it on tracing paper and reverse the image so when you print it, so it comes out right-side up.  Put the design on the block with carbon paper.  Use the kind that is found in triple-copy documents, as that carbon design cannot be rubbed off with your fingers.

Once the design is on the block, start carving.  Be aware that what is white on your final picture is the area that you have carved away; color stays on the raised portions.  Roll ink on the block and place paper on it to make a black and white copy.  Rub the paper with a tablespoon until all the ink is on the paper.  When inking, lift up one side of the paper at a time to see if it is inked properly; if not, touch it up with the roller.  Make prints until you get a really good copy.  If color is needed, put it on that final copy with a magic marker.  Take it to a commercial printer.  Judy gets 500 to 1,000 cards made from her copy.

Judy ran dogs in the Yukon and in Fairbanks for 25-30 years.  Besides loving the dogs, she likes to be outdoors.  She says mushing is good exercise in winter, and the country looks totally different than in the summer.  Her mushing career evolved from skiing to skijoring, and finally, to mushing.  Often she would go skijoring when in Juneau.  The dog team picture in this article was taken outside Juneau at Spaulding Meadows, a 3-mile hike up to a great place for skijoring.

After 15 years in Fairbanks, Judy moved to Gustavus.  Her hands were suffering from the cold winters, and she needed to be someplace warmer.  She thought Gustavus was a good choice because she also needed a place with flat terrain.  A knee injury from an auto accident made climbing hills difficult.

Though now she only has 12 dogs, Judy still runs them.  Their “trail” is Rink Creek Road.  The team pulls a dog cart or her car, which is a Geo Tracker.  She uses 6 dogs for the car, though 5 will pull it.

Here is a picture of Osa,  one of Judy’s lead dogs.  She also gets to be a housedog.  Osa is an AKC Siberian husky, daughter of Ruby,another AKC husky, who was killed by wolves in Gustavus.  Judy bought two male AKC Siberians, Kumo and Barack.  One of Kumo’s pups is in Colorado, where he lives with a boy with some serious health challenges.  The dog has helped the boy a great deal, and his health has improved.

Juneau people can meet Judy in person and buy some of her wonderful cards at the Juneau Public Market, held in Centennial Hall the 3 days after Thanksgiving.  Judy’s booth is in the same place every year in the Egan Room.  Be sure to stop by and say hello and make your card selection.

Carole Baker, Gustavus artist, has been perfecting her talent for 40 years.  Carole, a quiet and unassuming woman, has extended her artistic reputation across Alaska and to places Outside as well.

Carole spent her early years in Florida.  She liked to draw from childhood.  She got some drawing instruction in grade school, but art classes were not offered after 6th grade.  She went to college at Florida State University, where she majored in medical technology.  She interned in lab work in Atlanta, Georgia.

She worked as a med tech for 8 years, coming to Alaska in 1969 to work for Public Health Service in Anchorage.  As she was an itinerant worker, she traveled around the state to the communities that needed her services.  One such job commute took her to Sitka, where she met her husband, Van.  A fisherman, he lived on one-acre Maude Island (part of the Gilmore Island group), which he owned.  Carole quit her job and stayed, fishing with Van at first.  There, she again started drawing.  Van bought her some dime store watercolors, and she began painting on typing paper.  Her son, Lee, was born in 1972 while they lived on the island.

In 1973, Carole accompanied Van on a fishing trip to Icy Strait.  Van’s uncle had a summer place in Gustavus, and the couple stopped in for a visit.  The
two liked the place so much that the next day they took all the money they had made that week and bought some property.

In 1974, they moved to Gustavus, staying at what is now Aimee’s Guest House while building their home. At the time the guest house was not well-insulated, and Carole remembers that it was so cold that winter that their homemade beer froze inside, on the floor of the cabin.

In the spring of 1975, they moved into their house, which is the same one they live in now.  Van still fished in summer.  Carole accompanied him less and less.  She got seasick easily and preferred to stay home with her son and work on her garden. She has had a vegetable garden every year since moving to Gustavus.  At one time the garden was huge, but as the years go by and the gardener grows older, it has gotten smaller.  Yet, she can’t imagine not having a garden.  She also admits to having her own personal war on slugs.  She drops them in ammonia water.  She believes she may hold the record for the number of Gustavus slugs annihilated in one year.  (Way to go, Carole!)

Carole grows the usual assortment of plants that do well in our climate.  These include cabbage, broccoli, kale, spinach, arugula, parsley, carrots and potatoes.  She loves Icelandic poppies, a perennial, so she nurtures them every year.  They are frequent subjects for paintings.

Though her garden is fenced, moose occasionally jump the fence or knock it down to get to the garden.  For the most part, these visits have only happened infrequently.  Once when Carole and Van were about to go somewhere, they saw a moose and calf looking over the garden.  They chased the pair away and then left.  When they returned, they discovered that the moose had also returned, gotten into the garden, and had a great meal.  They took a moose-sized bite out of the middle of each of their lovely cabbage heads and stripped the broccoli and kale.

Bears have regularly visited the strawberry patch out in front of their large lawn, but seldom come closer to the house, except for the crab apple tree incident.  Carole and Van planted the tree when they first moved onto the property.  The little tree struggled, as the moose would strip off the limbs for a tasty snack.  The tree was gradually winning the battle against the creatures when the bear came to visit.  There were two high, healthy branches reaching ‘way above the rest of the tree.  The bear decided to climb the tree for the apples.  The Bakers saw him sitting in the top of the tree.  The bear, too heavy for the frail tree, broke the two remaining long branches.  At present, the tree appears to have weathered the attack, though it is a few feet shorter after the bear visit.

Having more time at home, Carole painted more.  She met Carol Janda, an artist whose husband worked at Glacier Bay National Park.  She took a class from Carol, who soon became her mentor.  Carol lent her art books, critiqued her work, and urged her to paint.  The two of them drew and painted together every day for awhile.  In the late 70s Carole had her first show, at Jack and Sally Lesh’s old floathouse in Gustavus.  Her paintings then were priced from $5.00 to a staggering $25.00.  During that time period, the state bought two of her pictures to place on permanent display on the ferry, “Taku.”

Perhaps some of Carole’s inspiration comes from her many trips.  She loves to travel, and goes someplace new whenever she can, usually once a year.  From another Gustavus resident, Artemis BonaDea, she learned the skill of bookmaking.  For her travel adventures, she makes small bound journals, often using watercolor paper inside.  With these she can paint, draw, add photos, and write an ongoing dialog of her adventures.  These books contain some intriguing and lovely drawings of places she has visited.  It seems to me that these wonderful little journals are a better souvenir of her travels than anything else she could bring home.  Among her journals are books from Spain, France, England, Japan, Italy, Ireland, Thailand, Nepal, Canada, and various areas of the United States.

Besides selling occasionally at various venues in Juneau and other places in Southeast Alaska, Carole gained acceptance into many juried shows.  These include the All-Alaska Juried Art Show and the Northwest Watercolor Society Show, which travels around the northwestern United States.  In 1990, she won Best of Show at the Fairbanks Watercolor Exhibition.

In the 90s she became more serious about painting flowers.  She says if she’d started painting at a younger age, she would probably have become a botanical illustrator.  Her
Alaska wild flower poster, notebook, and card come from that era. During that period, she began selling cards through Taku Graphics in Juneau.  It was through Taku that I first discovered Carole’s art.  I used to sell her cards in my Kodiak shop, long before I’d even heard of Gustavus.

For several years Carole did just watercolors.  Then, a few years ago, she started painting with oils, and is still using this medium for some of her work.  She has done some intaglio printing and woodblock print making.  She loves to do still life drawings — she likes to see what she is painting from real life, not from photographs.  Currently she is working on paintings of present-day Gustavus, attempting to keep the details as accurate as possible, so she can capture the picture before time and history change it.

Carole’s advice to a beginner is to draw at least 15 minutes every day.  It is important to work on art continuously.  Practice is necessary.    Composition (how we arrange the elements on paper) is important.   Carole likes to do several thumbnail sizes first, assigning the correct values of light and dark to the drawing.

If you would like to see more of Carole’s work, visit her two blogs.  Addresses of these are:.watercolorpostcards.blogpost.com and  carolebaker.blogspot.com.  If you would like to buy a piece of Carole’s art, go to www.carolebakerart.com.  Or, for you Juneau folks, a special treat:  Carole will share my booth this year at the Juneau Public Market, open for 3 days at Centennial Hall right after Thanksgiving.  Meet this incredible artist in person and pick out an original painting or two to take home with you.

Roger Williams met Mary in Indiana when he went to a restaurant to visit a friend.  Mary was working there as a waitress.  They were both drawn to the other, and soon they were a couple.

The two were married in 1972 and traveled to the East coast.  Seeing pictures on a calendar of big trees in British Columbia, they decided to move there.  However, since they could not work in Canada they ran out of money and moved to Ketchikan.  Here Roger worked in a fish plant.

Ketchikan was a wild town in those days.  The mills and fish processors operated around the clock.  The town flowed with money.  Once when the couple were walking down the street, they saw a man thrown bodily through a bar’s swinging doors.  He landed on the street right in front of them.

From 1973 until 1997, when the family finally moved to Gustavus, they lived a bit of a nomadic lifestyle.  They spent time in British Columbia, Juneau, and Game Creek on Chichagof Island, returning to Indiana for a few years now and then.  Roger made his first spoon at Game Creek, cutting a chunk off a 100-ounce bar of silver to do so.  New children graced the family regularly, and by the time they moved to Gustavus, there were 10 of them.

Their most remote residence was their home at Game Creek on Chichagof Island.  Roger saw a recent internet report that claimed the island had the highest density of bears anywhere in the world.  Bears were part of their way of life.  Once when Roger was cutting wood on the beach, he saw a very large bear approaching his cows, grazing nearby.  As he watched, two of the cows saw the bear and charged it, chasing it off.  Another time he watched a cow and a horse gang up on a bear and send it running.  In a third incident, he and Mary were out walking.  They could see the cattle grazing in a higher pasture.  When a bear came on the scene, the cows lined up and ran at the bear en masse, sending the large animal packing.

In 1997, the Williams bunch finally found a home in Gustavus.  The family had visited Gustavus several times before they moved. 
 Roger thought he could make a living making jewelry and doing repairs.  He set up shop at the Gustavus Dray and started making a few spoons.  Then they moved to their own small shop on Wilson Road in Gustavus, where Roger made jewelry and they sold fast food.  Said Mary, “Making food was a good way to get acquainted.”  Two of their daughters also worked in the little restaurant.

Mary says they home-schooled the children for a time in Gustavus.  They had cows, sheep, and a horse.  Roger and a friend invested in some Icelandic sheep, for the wool.  They milked the cows and sold the milk to Gustavus residents.

Mary recalls that the biggest problem they had with the children was keeping track of all of them.  It became important to count heads, to make sure no one was missing.  Once in Juneau, they were almost home from a church service and realized one son, Elijah, was not with them.  They drove back to the church and found him waiting at the door with a lady from the church who stayed to wait with him.

On a ferry trip, Roger saw a spoon for sale that was made of pewter.  The bowl almost looked like a coin, giving him the idea of doing a spoon with a coin in the bowl.  He thought that spoons could be made from silver or copper and sold as souvenirs.

By 2002, Roger was making more spoons than jewelry.  He uses a lot of coins in his creations.  Popular are Irish coins or the Alaska state quarter featuring a bear design.  One of his sons built the small structure between their house and the road that would be used for a shop.

Roger now works in copper and German silver, making ladles, serving spoons, coffee measures, spatulas, teaspoons and tablespoons.  His daughter, Hannah, does  some of the designs stamped into the spoons, a process called “chasing.”

Roger’s spoons are well-traveled by now.  He remembers customers from Israel, England, Poland, the Czech Republic, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, and most of the states.  He says he doesn’t think that he’s sold a spoon to anyone from Nebraska.

If you would like to purchase one of Roger’s lovely creations, you can do so on the internet site, “Etsy.”  Type in the following URL:  www.alaskametalsmiths.etsy.com, and you will go directly to his collection.

Roger and Mary are members of a faith called “Brethren.”  They do not proselytize; rather, they demonstrate their faith through example.  From observing these two people, I would guess that the Brethren are family-oriented, peace-loving people, kind to all and happy to lend a hand when needed.  They treat all people with respect and are soft-spoken, not argumentative.  They believe that love and caring are stronger forces than strife and anger.  This description might not fit all Brethren, but it fits Roger and Mary Williams.