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| Heidi Hahn |
I was born in Concord, Massachusetts, following my parents' graduations from Harvard and Radcliffe. After my father's subsequent completion of a law degree at Virginia Lawschool, our family struck out for Alaska to get as far away from what my father claimed was "The East Coast Establishment" as possible. My parents were able to provide an intellectual and artistic environment for myself and four more daughters to grow up in. We had music aplenty from our own respective instruments ( mine being the piano) and from attendance at many concerts.
As a girl I remember the thrill of holding curtains aside for world-famous musicians to enter and exit the stage during their performances. Their extraordinary dedication to excellence could not help but incite my own early on. And if I can lay claim to any genetic influence in the direction I took, it could be from my great grandfather on Dad's side, a well- known commercial artist who painted the cameo portraits of Breck Hair Shampoo girls in the magazines.
Although I did not go to college until my later twenties, I never left my desire to study behind while exploring Alaska through other professional endeavors which included an extended tour of duty on a fishing boat. After my deck and galley chores were done, for five years I pulled out my microscope, textbooks and sketch pad to describe, render and identify the various creatures we plumbed from the icy depths of Prince William Sound to the North Pacific waters surrounding Kodiak Island.
As a girl I remember the thrill of holding curtains aside for world-famous musicians to enter and exit the stage during their performances. Their extraordinary dedication to excellence could not help but incite my own early on. And if I can lay claim to any genetic influence in the direction I took, it could be from my great grandfather on Dad's side, a well- known commercial artist who painted the cameo portraits of Breck Hair Shampoo girls in the magazines.
Although I did not go to college until my later twenties, I never left my desire to study behind while exploring Alaska through other professional endeavors which included an extended tour of duty on a fishing boat. After my deck and galley chores were done, for five years I pulled out my microscope, textbooks and sketch pad to describe, render and identify the various creatures we plumbed from the icy depths of Prince William Sound to the North Pacific waters surrounding Kodiak Island.
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| Heidi Hahn |
Admittedly I got carried away with my adventuring, because I then ventured into the Alaskan wilderness or "Bush" to hunt, trap, goldmine, build log cabins, climb mountains, blaze trails and just plain survive on the most elemental level. Consequently, I probably delayed the development of my art career by about ten years but now feel I have more vivid experiences to paint about than could have been derived from imagination alone.
One of the severest episodes I can recall was hiking around the south end of Kodiak Island in blustery winter winds and along ice-encrusted rock cliffs searching for otter and fox while hoping to avoid any marauding brown bears with only a 22-rifle to protect me! The scrapes and gauges in my gun stock bear testament to my city-bred clumsiness. I do keenly remember that warmth and light and food transformed the simplest of shelters in the wilderness, i.e., a walltent or suspended tarp or "wicki-up," into the richest of "palaces."
One of the severest episodes I can recall was hiking around the south end of Kodiak Island in blustery winter winds and along ice-encrusted rock cliffs searching for otter and fox while hoping to avoid any marauding brown bears with only a 22-rifle to protect me! The scrapes and gauges in my gun stock bear testament to my city-bred clumsiness. I do keenly remember that warmth and light and food transformed the simplest of shelters in the wilderness, i.e., a walltent or suspended tarp or "wicki-up," into the richest of "palaces."
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After my winter's sojourn on Kodiak, I followed my then wilderness partner to the wilds of the Interior of Alaska to usher in spring, camping alongside one of the numerous lakes that pepper the Yukon Flats. There I was initiated into trapping for muskrats and thrilled to all of the incoming, feathered migrants who courted and cavorted, laid their eggs and reared their young in the short summer season before their long migration south again.
I also learned the difference between a vole and a black bear one night when I kept hearing soft, shuffling sounds that I first attributed to a foraging vole and later, when startled awake by the airy draft of the canvas door flap flapping in the wake of a bear circling the tent, realized my mistake. The mistake was immediately confirmed when we discovered that an entire brick of Tillamook cheese had been stolen from our meager rations outside. No vole would have done that!
I also learned the difference between a vole and a black bear one night when I kept hearing soft, shuffling sounds that I first attributed to a foraging vole and later, when startled awake by the airy draft of the canvas door flap flapping in the wake of a bear circling the tent, realized my mistake. The mistake was immediately confirmed when we discovered that an entire brick of Tillamook cheese had been stolen from our meager rations outside. No vole would have done that!
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| Heidi Hahn and Wildlife Photographer Friend |
After a stint of gold mining and log cabin building in the Alaskan Interior, I left my wilderness survival existence and embarked on more schooling. After studying zoology, art history and beginning levels of painting and drawing in Anchorage, my art professors took a few students on their first trip to New York. There I not only fell in love with some of the greatest art museums in the world, but interviewed at Pratt and the School of Visual Arts.
I must confess that I learned as much from the dead masters as the live ones when I haunted the halls of the Metropolitan and major art museums of Western Europe. They, too, taught me through their timeless masterpieces. From firsthand exposure I acquired an intimate knowledge of a greater range of art styles - Abstract Expressionism, Impressionism and Realism - than I ever could have done from the cultural backwaters of Alaska. As outstanding a source of raw inspiration as Alaska is for paintings, it simply does not provide enough of the distilled inspiration of the arts. One day I hope to be able to travel back and forth between the two, for one cannot help but enhance the other.
I must confess that I learned as much from the dead masters as the live ones when I haunted the halls of the Metropolitan and major art museums of Western Europe. They, too, taught me through their timeless masterpieces. From firsthand exposure I acquired an intimate knowledge of a greater range of art styles - Abstract Expressionism, Impressionism and Realism - than I ever could have done from the cultural backwaters of Alaska. As outstanding a source of raw inspiration as Alaska is for paintings, it simply does not provide enough of the distilled inspiration of the arts. One day I hope to be able to travel back and forth between the two, for one cannot help but enhance the other.