PIXELED OUT

INSPIRATION & METAPHORS BEHIND THIS COLLECTION

This series is an ode—and what some could also see as a tongue n cheek mockery—to the pixilated world in which we are trapped in. the antithesis of hi-def all around us. A reprieve to the eye one could call it, the Pixalization reflects the progressive 20th century era of computers and other screen technology. We, more than ever, view fine art through the lenses of our screens instead of in person. Hi-def only keeps us drawn in, which leads to my fun overcorrection of hyperbolic pixels to cause the viewer to step back from the screen—in so rare and ironic fashion—in order to see the clearer picture. In essence, these pieces dust off and reactivate the reward centers of our brains that configure something out of focus back into focus.

I had an epiphany in December 2023 at Red Dot Miami when I was describing this body of work to people: Pixels are like atoms—the building blocks of digital 2d media and photographs which make the lens to which we see so much beauty in the world! I’m bringing those pixels to the forefront and appreciating the clean, stark, geometric aesthetics of the simple square that makes up our 2d world of pictures. This brings me to this art’s dual nature: abstract geometric up front but as you get farther away you appreciate the clarity of a realism portrait it is taking on. Thus, a well-known  metaphor follows: the farther away we step back from something sometimes makes it more clear—you “see the bigger picture.”

This collection eludes to the spectrum of definition found in day-to-day photographic images—that we constantly revolve our lives around and scrutinize—and relegating that concept into a form of high art. It’s like a fusion of different styles that, combined with the subject itself,  is bursting with layers: it’s fine art mimicking digitization while it is abstract masquerading as realistic (once you move far enough back). There is a certain beauty and appreciation to be found in each stage—from lo-def to hi-def—which the 21st century-eye (viewer/art connoisseur) is acutely aware of. 

TECHNIQUE INSPIRATION

When I started doing collage 6yrs ago I was working off my painting skills and now I’m returning back to painting more intensively these days with the skills I cultivated doing collage work. My painting work complimented my collage and my collage work complimented back to my painting. How this style reflects the mosaic style of antiquity can just as much reflect the pixelated world of the Digital Age.

HUMAN RELATIONS: UP CLOSE BUT SO FAR AWAY

Interestingly, with this art style: the subject comes to life—looks  MORE realistic—when you  look at it at a side angle. You would think it would be out of focus but it has the opposite effect. This actually reminds me of knowing a person. We so often take them at face value, literally, by relying mostly on our focal vision.  It is a teaching moment in the practice of defining not just art but individuals, too: there are two dimensions to everyone. There is the up close (in the moment) and the observations from afar (the time away from them) which gives us the overall consensus of this individual—that third multi-dimensional layer of every human being if we yearn enough to find it. It is only THEN in those seemingly inconsequential viewpoints does the true character composite and identity of that person reveal itself to us.

MONA LISA 2021 oil on canvas 30X80” For full collection, press here

This Slumber Party Is Over

I wrote the following essay in 2016:

I could feel the sentiments of that scene from “Home Is Where The Heart Is.” This 17year old single mom to be. Abandoned. Somewhere in Oklahoma. Uncertain of her future. Her only assets were her long locks, sun dress, youthful beauty and a young plant she just purchased—perhaps serving as a metaphor to encourage the growth of what her story would become, a parallel to the young daughter growing inside her. After giving birth in a Walmart aisle, she names her Americus. I see it as a combination of America (never taking our freedoms for granted) and Invictus (meaning “unconquerable” in latin). I believe Americus represents the triumph over the death that she could have succumbed to before she even made it into the world had her mom chosen to abort her. In reality there are a lot of women similar to Novalee in an inconvenient situation to have a child. Like her namesake, Americus defied all the odds to make it into this world.

But it shoudn’t be like that.

It shouldn’t be that 1 and 4 females have an abortion. It shouldn’t be that we should have pregancy scares which—surprise—only seem to happen outside of wedlock when you are not ready to have a baby. Birthcontrol using condoms is about 85% effective—and still only 98% when used perfectly. The pill and IUD are both 99.9%. Women who use no birth control and women on birth control (and it ends up failing) is where we are now: more babies being born out of wedlock than ever before, 1/3 of the annual poplulation growth is being terminated before birth because they would be out of wedlock, and women who are not married and don’t get pregnant, nonetheless, still have several pregnancy scares (either on or off BC) every year leading to ALOT of anxiety and denial. So let’s talk, girls—and all you boys should lean in, too.

A panic like no other

As an artist and visionary I most often involuntarily project myself into the future in the most lively of ways—sometimes it can be so beautiful, sometimes it can be terrifying and I feel powerless. I’ve never been pregnant but I could feel the vulnerability pervading that scene. Imaginations such as mine often teach lessons to the individual from actual experiences they never had. It is a common emotion many women like myself have found themselves in—whether pregnant or pregancy scare. Such was the latter case when I was sitting in a Walgreens parking lot at 10pm one night 5 years ago—contemplating buying a pregnancy test. That was the last time I had sex and decided to wait until marriage. I had just broken off an intense 5week fling—my first and only I had and there was a mishap on the condom a couple weeks prior. I was paranoid. I wanted to buy a pregnancy test because my mind was going crazy. I knew I never under any circumstances would abort MY child, nor did I want to have a child out of wedlock. It felt like I was in a headlock of emotions. My heart was beating like the drums from that movie “Jimanji” when they rolled the dice and didn’t know where they were going to land. In the midst of my powerlessness, a visceral fear of God came over me in the coming weeks: the next time I would give my body away would be to my husband.

Up until that point, I was waiting until marriage longer than most. Admittingly (like a good amount of virgins I can imagine), I blue balled a few guys but I managed to stave off partaking in the actual horizontal activity until I found myself in said situation above. It was after I surrendered to the notions that A) no guy I was going after was going to respect my choice to wait and at the same time B) my lustful desires and curiosity had reached a crescendo while C) I was around enough of my girlfriends over the years nudging me that I needed to have some “practice“ and “fun“ before marriage. My consumption of mainstream womens magazines and guilty pleasure MTV reality shows like Rock of Love and Bad Girl’s Club, although I did not agree with them, brought me farther away from God’s purpose for my long-drawn out singlehood that I was growing impatiently self aware of.Hyperbolically speaking, it was like several trains on a collision course. A sexually charged yet restrained individual can only hold out for so long if they don’t find The One in a certain time frame expected. I was prideful of my solo walk and thought I could hold my own at the same time that I started conveniently embracing the lie of wrapping up more of my worth in men through my sexuality—because that’s what I saw other women doing around me, even my church-going friends. “Why me? Why are you giving me this kind of wait?” were my thoughts back then.

Perphaps it was all forebearing writing this blog you are reading today—to help another girl out. All it takes is one attitude change to create a domino effect in society and a few attitudes to have an exponential effect. Four years ago I really started opening my eyes to what the feminist movement was programming into the hearts and minds of girls in my generation regarding sex. Subsequentely, I started blogging on the matter after reading Suzanne Venker’s “The Flipside of Feminism“ and also in response to the highly circulated “The Future Is Female“ teeshirt.

Eyes wide shut

Five years ago today I still remember that feeling of my world taking a different trajectory, if I had gotten pregnant how my life would have shifted because I would have ended up keeping a baby with a guy I only knew a month. I went through a pregnancy scare ONCE. The average woman my age probably goes through a few a year. No one can tell me they are not feeling something along the lines of what I am talking about right now.

The story is all too common. It is almost too common that we have become numb to our disgraced feeling of having used sex outside of the confines of marriage because the 1960’s culture said it was ok to do so. “People don’t blush anymore” my grandma always says in regards to today’s sexual indiscretions and blatent promiscuity. The default consensus back then by both men and women was that they would wait until marriage—today it is flip flopped and the default is that sex is just expected outside of marriage and if you are holding there is something wrong with that (and don’t say it’s cute or endearing, we who wait know that is belittleing). That’s how far—how sickly—our culture has become. There seems to be no self reprimending because we play like the men in the name of equality which I see is great for the here and now but bleak for our futures.

The Lies they told us

“Empowerment” comes to young women as a form of setting us free from the shackles of marriage, children and spousal responsibility but ironically it puts us in new shackles: the ones of self absorption (sleeping with several women’s future husbands), procrastination (letting our best fertile years go to waste), irresponsibility (pregnancy scares) and denial of worth (“he’ll leave me if we don’t have sex”).

I have read countless articles on this subject. In my mind it devolves something like this: “Gotta get that career going, might as well get on birth control the next ten years because, let’s face it, there is no way you will wait until marriage for sex let’s get real (too many men expect it now because that’s what women have given them) ! Oh, and while you work like a race horse and give your body up in the most fertile years of your life (many will face an abortion this way out of inconvenience) don’t forget to freeze your eggs so when you are finally settled into your copywriter or fashion assistant career your eggs are dried up and its harder to find a man and you can finally have a baby for $25,000 of IVF treatment.

Talk about a viscious cycle. Is it just me or is this self mutilation of the female mind?

Pay attention to the rule—not the exception

You won’t find these stories in Cosmo, Vogue or Glamour. We are so worried about white oppression, race wars, and expounding on women’s rights in this country that we forget the stories that women are really thinking about. You see, what society observes out in the open is mere theater compared to what is going on behind the curtain inside us: the experiences that us girls go through between having our period at the average age of 13 and up until we get married. It’s a 20year landmine of reckless behavior—if we allow it to be. The more partners a woman has before marrying the greater likelihood of divorce—that is, if you can find someone to marry in the first place. The stark reality is that your sexual market value decreases in your 30s. You are reckless and play around in your 20s and you will pay for it in your 30s. Nothing is free in this life. The assault on the sexual moores of American women—not being encouraged to defer gratification until marriage—is almost a new form of slavery.

I wrote 70pages of poetry when I was 24 and one of my most powerful was a 1,137-word poem called “Bars.“ I want to provide a few sections as it encapsulates what the average female is going through, today. Whichever way you interpret it, I know it will have a profound effect on you. It’s about how WE as these intelligent 21st century have-it-going-on women can be in these shackles of emotional strife when it comes to sex that we hastily yet reluctantly put ourselves in as society sits back and watches as we simotaneously play victim and foe.

BARS

I feel like I’m in prison and its not the one you’re thinkin’

The one where I am free to do as I please—

Make something of myself like they all did it seems, 

I stand up in court everyday 

But even I cannot save me—I am my own worst enemy

I take myself away in shackles that only the angels above could hear rattle

I step outside—I’m free—another day free!

But I am back in my prison cell once again—

You would never know the way I smile at you 

On a happy Sunday morning from my cushioned church pew.

Like a bird in its cage—yeah I know its cliché

But this is how I feel about right now I just figured it out.

I’m in a beautiful adorned cage and you, the world,

I just let stare back at me as you wait for me to attempt to take fight—

Escape these bars I put up around me and set myself free tonight!

But I’m not letting myself out

No, No, I’ve  spent too much time constructing

These beautiful bars up around me—

Invisible to your eye but to mine, always there.

But for now it is like the bird 

that sings to me on the other side of my “prison walls’

So I ask myself “who is freer?” that bird in its physical cage 

Or me in my psychological plague?

That last part of the poem packs a punch: We live in the most free society yet women oppress their freedom to do what is noble with their bodies and with their futures when it comes to sex.

Sanctity of life

We might be of sexual maturity but that doesn’t mean we are mature in our views of what sex really is and how it should be reveared: just like how human life is sacred, so is the act that makes life. There seems to be that missing element in health class, amongst parents even—and, not surprisingly, amongst the mainstream culture of entertainment fed to us everyday. We became one big delinquent society with more babies born our of wedlock than in marriage. 

It started in the 60s. Degrade the meaning of sex, make premarital sex not taboo anymore. Pass Roe v. Wade. Then degrade the need for men (2nd 3rd wave feminism), demystify the gay culture—-not only accept and tolerate, we must embrace them. Next, punch the sanctity of marriage in the gut and groom society into nihilism—the government has ultimate authority over the Bible—by enacting gay marriage. Equalize the sexes so that leads to enacting genderlessness, creating new penal codes of hate crimes against the LGBT community if they go against what you believe—even if its practicing out the truth of the Bible. Throw in environmental propoganda like the risk of overpopulation and global warming to scare off (primarily) white couples from having more than 2 kids (or any kids at all). Now we have a negative population growth rate right now and muslims are coming in to replace blacks and whites. Over the next 20 years this will happen if American women don’t step up and start deferring gratification until marriage and capitalizing on their healthy fertility years.

Feminism does not equal equality but idiocracy instead. The women might be getting more education these days, making their own living but putting that above the CORE of what civilization is built on—family and marriage—that is the ultimate propaganda to destabilize the home and allow full government control. This is the most pressing issue of our time. We change the way we think about the sanctity of life then we sure as heck would change the way we view sex in this society: WHO we do it with, WHEN we do it with, WHY we do it with. 

A RACE TO THE BOTTOM

“There used to be this unspoken female solidarity which says we’re going to slut shame the hell out of the promiscuous woman so she doesn’t handout for free what men need to earn”

Stephan Molyneux 

The problem is now all sexual moores are destroyed by promiscuity. Now all virgins are prudes and all men are sexist but don’t you dare slut shame a promiscuous woman! The women who think they can get away with having sex outside of marriage and still not think about repercussions in their marriage (if she ends up marrying the guy, plus the 5 or so average amount of guys the women slept with BEFORE MEETING her husband) does not equate to marital bliss. In fact, studies have shown that premerital sex is the root cause of divorce in this country.

The lie that women should feel liberated and empowered to now play like the men these days is a gross misunderstanding of the power they really have to say “no” instead of “yes.” Deferring gratification is a sign of intelligence by the way. Thus, touting liberation and empowerment is really under the guise of promoting ignorance and naivety. The feminists want nothing more than you to work like horses until “you’re settled with your career”, stave off marriage until your 39 and your ovaries have already dried up. I hate writing that but it’s true.  Today, sex sells as cheap as a Kit Kat bar in a vending machine when it should really be attained at a 5class restaurant (metaphorically speaking, more virtuous).

“Have sex when you are ready”

(a.k.a. the worst advice ever)

Humanity has good intentions but we are fallen beings and this advice sets a fallen human up for failure. We need some transcendent order, a convenant to perfect the otherwise blurred boundries we would place for ourselves. Have you ever heard “Love is blind?”‘ This is why we don’t gauge our ultimate thoughts on how we feel about someone outside of marriage in the same way we feel once we are committed to them in marriage. This is why God starkly said keep sex within the confines of marriage. Keep the fire in the fireplace—capiche? The obscurity of this shallow diplomatic statement that your parents or friends gave you growing up needs a reality check— we live in a fallen world. If I took that advice I’d have sex by the third date easily, maybe the 6th if I was being conservative. Seriously what the heck does that statement even mean?! It’s a defeating case in itself. Left to our own devices, in the fog of navigating true love until we both say I do, is just too much of a burden for me. Have I wanted to live out my fantasy life like one of the girls from “The Sweetest Thing”, sure. But we let art imitate life too much in this country that it is impacting the sobriety of how and when God wanted sex placed in our actual lives. Marriage is that safety net. Of course there are lots of couples who have slept their way to the alter but that has not set them up for a good marriage and the baggage they carry with their other ex-partners compounds that. Less than only 15% of people who wait until marriage end up getting divorced!

It’s just this obscure notion of “keep his dick away from as long as you can until he’s made it clear he loves you and wants you in his life.” Fine, then what? That is so naive to think that outside of premarital love is the same as covenant love—it doesn’t have staying power until you say your vows, period. Sex is like fire, you use it to warm a house or burn it down. It all has to do with the BOUNDARIES you put up. Unless you have a fireplace (in marriage) you have nowhere safe to put this flame. 

CHARMINGNESS IS DECEITFUL, BEAUTY IS VAIN

Proverbs 31:30

That has always been a hard verse for me to digest but that’s how boundaries are ushered in. Boundaries! Seriously, someone tell me what love is anymore outside of marriage that justifies us banashing our dignity for short term satisfaction that so few times leads to fruition in that walk down the aisle? Men will wait, sure. Men will whisper in your ears to tell you about your future. Men will also leave you once they’ve gotten what they want and there is no contract to stay in. I’m not being paranoid—I’m being as real and matter of fact as the sun comes up every day. The depression rate is 3x higher for women who are cohabitating with a man vs women who are married and couple who cohabitated before getting married have as much as a 46% higher divorce rate. I will never forget a woman once sternly telling me (after she got in an argument about something unrelated with her live-in boyfriend) with tears streaming down her face: “Sex should be illegal until you’re married.“ Moments like that stick with you.

I don’t think it’s liberation to have sex outside of marriage. For a moment, YES it’s awesome but that is the most fleeting and deceiving bill of lies sold to the American woman today. “But he won’t stay with me, Whitney” PERFECT! Door is that way. Congratulations, you just saved two months to two years out of your life by NOT staying in a convenient quasi relationship with his “love” for you masked in the free sex he could attain and empty words of praise for your future as a couple while you played wifey with him under one roof of empty promises, shallow commitment, and no sacred covenant of marriage. Let him move on to the next girl that should probably, if she were more smart be at least CHARGING for her services like a good prostitute (who is now without a job because of you). Stop sleeping with your boyfriends until they become your husbands! 

SUMMARIZING

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJh962pYvAU

“Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good”

-Romans 12:9

Thankfully, I left the party a long time ago before it could really gain any traction in my life but I never left the people still there. I have always had a earning within me to let others know everything I said above and today I will say it for the millions of girls that are screaming it inside: sex without a left ring has warn out its welcome. You’re not cool anymore, Samantha Jones. This slumber party is OVER.

More data:

https://divorce.lovetoknow.com/Divorce_Rates

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um3EmS9DKsI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL1l9ZtGC2w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYG3I2ZANfs

Behind the Creation of Roku & Tanza

ROKU & TANZA: The story behind the story

The rich tale (or tail if you want to lace it with the pun—for this is truly what has given me momentum to move through a sea of artistry this past year!) started way long ago back in 1993 when I first saw the movie Free Willy. I was 6 years old at the time and that movie cemented the current nostalgia I still have to this day surrounding my love for orcas and one of Han’s Christen Andersen’s greatest works “The Little Mermaid.” I was mesmerized by the sleek simple beauty and unique aesthetics of this great creature. Not to mention the emotional intelligence of it, which I would come to appreciate more as I got older and matured, learning and appreciating what made the orca stand out amongst the others in the Animal Kingdom. That movie also solidified my roots as a PNW girl: I was living just north of Seattle in the idyllic small town of Mukilteo at the time, the first half of my childhood (1989-1996). The town is somewhat built up but remnants still remain: I still cruise by the first 7/11 that formed in my memory and the Albertsons we always used to shop at is still there, too. My parents built a huge house on a cliff overlooking Whidbey Island across the Puget Sound. When I saw Free Willy, I imagined Keiko  roaming those waters—after he was set free by Jesse!  I returned to Seattle in 2016 to live after my family moved to Colorado in 1996. The return to that part of the country flooded my my life with childhood memories of what orcas meant to me.

INSPIRATIONS

Life on a commercial salmon fishing boat shaped who I am today and what inspires my art path.

Read more about my childhood growing up as an Alaskan fisherman’s daughter!

Seward, Alaska 2020 | With my Nephew Roku watching my dad’s boat F/V Memry Anne make its first splash in the harbor to start the fishing season.

Books

“Killing Keiko: The True Story of Free Willy’s Return to the Wild”:  by Mark A Simmons who joined the months-long mission of getting Keiko prepped for the ocean. I highly recommend this book!

“Orca: How We Came to Know and Love the Ocean’s Greatest Predator” by  Jason M Colby. I watched one of his talks at Seattle Aquarium in 2019–this book was a labor of love and one can feel that when reading it.

Art Wolfe coffee table books –I recall in the late 90s flipping through one of his books and this one image of an orca was so mesmerizing (beaching themselves in Patagonia to grab a seal). This is an example of a powerful irony in the animal kingdom: risking death in order to survive.

“Black Fish”: Although not as objective of the pure definition of documentary would have it, brought me back to my Seattle days where the first orcas were captured. The dark story of Shamu and his trainer of 10 years, Dawn, brought tears to my eyes. From gut wrenching to heart warming: the complexity of the situation of whales in captivity hit me at a visceral level. 

Desolation Sound yacht trips

 To supplement my art income, I have been a freelance yacht stewardess since 2012! I made a ton of friends in the yachting community including a fellow South African yacht stewardess named Tanza for which my teenage mermaid  in the book is named after! Tanza just sounds like the female version of Tarzan: a carefree and adventurous lone ranger—but she’s under the sea! On that note, my beloved 3yr old nephew named Roku inspired my baby whale name. When I moved to Seattle in 2016 I continued my yacht ventures every summer and the private yachts I worked on would go up to this magestical land called Desolation Sound.  This place, located between Vancouver Island and lower British Columbia is a West coast yachter’s paradise. Read more about my adventures as a yacht stewardess in British Columbia here!

UNPRECEDENTED. My @whitneylanderson_art drawing from Summer 2018 while I was yachting IN Desolation Sound—the area where this occurred. This picture depicts the labor of J35 Tahlequah carrying her deceased newborn daughter for 17 days, roughly 1,000 miles, from the Salish Sea, to the open ocean, and back. I wrote a poem about this in the wake of one of the most heartfelt travesties I have witnessed within the animal kingdom 🖤...................................................................................

“Before I let you go”
I will make the memories we never had.
Before I let you go, let me just imagine one more breath.
Before I let you go, I wonder where the current will take you.
The tides will rise and fall but my love for you will never sigh:
now every time I come up for air I’ll cherish it as my first and last—the one and only you ever had.
🖤....................................................................................

Only an orca could show such brazen defiance, such melancholic denial—almost usurpation of how a human would mourn—in the loss of their kin. Not only are orcas my favorite animal, this case sheds light on my own species that is aborting their own without conscious right now. LIFE inside the womb = LIFE outside the womb. This case of an orca and her baby has been emotionally arresting to me on so many levels. #OrcasAreEverything #LifeIsPrecious #whitneylanderson

There is no mild enthusiasm I have for whales—its full on, black and white . I have pure LOVE for these creatures and the mystical mermaid that is integral to bringing out the fanciful side of my storyline. This is a book that both child and parent will enjoy!

SWIMMING IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: Feeling Above the Clouds When You’re Beneath the Surface

Getting into 53degree water can be uncomfortable to most but having a beautiful environment around you is key—it’s all about the mindset you are in! And also I don’t dive in—that would shock my system. I wade ankle deep for a few minutes until the most circulated part of my body becomes numb to the frigid temps. I splash water on my arms and face ...and then...time for the plunge. That’s when I get intimidated but then I think about open cold-water pro Lynn Cox (who I still want to read her books!) about swimming in Antarctica for a mile and across the English Channel. And here I am in my safe little cove with cute seals popping their heads up 100meters away. Before over-thinking everything and turning away all together I just go for it. It’s not easy but it’s the “not easy” that makes us feel the most alive in this life—and cold water does that for me. My sweet spot is in the low 50’s, that’s when I feel like I’m actually exercising my nervous system: to go numb, retracting your receptors every now and then with the cold, is vital to a healthy life. People even pay for this effect in the form of cryo therapy spa sessions. My spa is free, out here in nature...Meanwhile I’m already in the water, 15 minutes go by and the ocean feels less like an icebox and more like a cool glove enveloping my body, clearing my busy head of the mental luggage of that day—my past, my future fears, everything. Now I want to stay in there forever but it’s 9:45 and getting dark….

During the summers, not every body of water heats up to relative outside temps--use it to your advantage!

Wading in cold water is great for your nervous system. As a life-long enthusiast and cold water advocate (check out Wim Hoff if you really want to get inspired beyond me!lol), here are my 5 helpful tips for swimming in cold water:

1) Gradual progression (let your body get to know what’s about to happen) so get in half way and then out and then repeat, going a little further each time.

2) Mindset/breathing (knowing you are focused and in control)

3) Beautiful scenery (makes for a great distraction)

4) Ice baths are overrated: You can get the same cryotherapy effect in low 50s water as apposed to an excruciating ice bath (sub 50s!)

5) Think of it as excercising your nervous system: going to the gym is not that pleasant but we do it to strengthen our muscles, much like cold water does for our nervous system. I see cold water wading as more of a discipline, versus warmer water is as an enjoyment.

SUMMER DIARY ENTRIES, JULY 2019 // DESOLATION SOUND, BRITISH COLUMBIA

“The ocean is a desert with its life underground and its spacious skies above. In the desert you can’t remember your name because there ain’t no one to give you no name”

Those lyrics from Americana may have been written when the band members were high on something back in the 70s but it parallels today’s sobering experience of getting into an enchanting cove called Chatterbox Falls in British Columbia.

Chatterbox Falls is dripping with Hollywood nostalgia of a gorgeous nature so intoxicating  that, from afar, her waterfalls and virgin wilderness seem to whisper “come hither”. This exotic lush green oasis is akin to the opening scenes of Jurassic Park, these daunting fjords towering over us and trapping whiffs of low-lying  mist at all hours of the day. Suffice it to say, the purity of this form of nature from afar does not equate to it’s innocence up close. First sign you see when you get to land is “WARNING: Watch out for bears--everywhere”.  Once we hit land I transform myself into the crew from Prometheus when they come upon Planet 2842—until one of them steps on fungus and inhales a microscope alien embryo from its pores. Then you know what happens next. But that’s when my imagination snaps back to reality: the only threat I’m going to have around here is not giving birth to an alien but having a black bear surprise me. But let’s return to the water, shall we, because that is what I really wanted to divulge in. 

I am currently writing a children’s book about a mermaid and an orca befriending eachother and this has given me all the more inspiration to make it come to life through my pictures. I open my eyes underwater and think it will sting but am pleasantly surprised by how it doesn’t—becoming more of the adult Pisces that I am? No silly—and then I remember. When we were kids it was mostly chlorine-drenched pools that wrecked our sclera so much even after a few seconds of accidentally opening them we would come out looking like we had pink eye. Not after my swim in Chatterbox: after 45 minutes in I was feeling so euphoric about my swim I was getting a little cocky like “the ocean loves me, I could totally be a mermaid,” and right then I scraped my chest against the ocean floor. You see, the water was several degrees warmer starting a couple feet beneath the surface and everytime I got to the surface I couldn’t wait to dive back down again into the blanket of warm sea water. However, just skimming the ocean floor and coming back with a scraped chest was a subtle yet strong reminder that the ocean is not my home—it is to be awed and reveared. Its not a lofty Lisa Frank water park and neither is it the dire Deep Blue Sea movie—its something in-between those sentiments that is meant to be discovered on my own terms every chance I get.

Trepidatiously, I head back to the boat trying to push back thoughts of me playing Kevin Costner’s Mariner character in Waterworld and there’s a big mutant sea monster about to surprise him.  

  I felt moments where my imagination went to sleep (I love it when it does that) because there I was just floating and soaking in God’s nature right then and there—listening intently on anything I missed while back on land glued to my iPhone 10 screen trying to distract myself from His “Still small voice.”  The loudness of life gets in the way of the high frequency supernatural communication I have with my Father in heaven. To restore that I have to be right in nature where no man-made object has been built but only His-hand in creation. That’s where you can experience God on the purist level.  Someone wrote about Chatterbox that echoes my thoughts:

If you’re an athiest when you come in here you won’t be when you leave here.” Only God could create a place like this. 

The water is murky—like a monet painting upclose or the Japanese photographic term boké.  I tip toe along the bottom in the shallow spots to test for barnacles--which are ironically worse to step on than hot coals. I take a deep breath and with my fragmented vision I see shiny shells but I can’t make out the texture until I pick them up—I come to the surface and it’s an oyster! I love subsisting off the land—far from the mild thrill I get when stepping outside my Seattle apartment to pick from a rosemary bush. I proudly say I never have to buy rosemary in the Fred Meyer Spice aisle which gives me deep gratification—oh the small victories of being a city girl! But back to the oysters—I was so inspired by that moment because as a stewardess my boss spends gobs of money to be in this environment with his mega yacht and to go sports fishing it costs hundreds of dollars—even if you don’t catch anything that day! Money is no object for these people but they still like to be shrewd where they can be and if I can bring fresh free oysters to the dinner table that night I know he will be happy!

   I have now been a yacht stewardess for 7years now and the glee of getting in the cool waters of Maine back in 2013 is still many years later and on the opposite coast. This is the westcoast version of New England’s sea playground. I recall Block Island,  Nantucket and Martha’s but there is something even more exquisite about the great northwest that is as grande as it is miles away separated from the east coast.

I don’t like to swim, I like to wade and there is nothing more exhilarating—and mind-challenging—than getting in the dark cool waters of a place where no one else is swimming. It’s something that I have to push myself to do every time—because without taking risks I wouldn’t be writing this story right now. Movies like Jaws, Deep Blue Sea and Lake Placid have always been my guilty pleasures. I love suspense films when they have to do with predators of the deep that you can’t see. I relish knowing I am curled up on a comfortable sofa in full security than the characters on the screen. But then it becomes my turn to. I have to become one of those characters on the action screen that get in the water, heart palpitating and a rush of adrenaline –I am no longer on my comfy coach watching my heroines swim unassumingly as something lurks in the deep. I have a very whimsical yet meloncholic nature which does not help my getting into unknown waters. I can either terrify myself with illusions of mythical creatures beneath me or I can aleviate my fears by pretending that I am in a Lisa Frank world of vegetarian animals such as Unicorns that nibble on Pacific northwest ferns and friendly beluga whales that feed off seaweed and if  at all curious they will come up to lick me with curiosity as I swim by.  

Brave, Bold, Defient: An American Protester's Candid Speech to the National Guard

I watched a video on Facebook recently that epitomized a long-loved quote of mine:

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

-Edmund Burke-

In that video, a man named Dr Cordie Lee Williams triumphed for the good. I want everyone to hear what I did (my transcript of it is also available to read, below). Dr Williams, a retired US marine-turned holistic doctor,  addresses heavily armed national guard outside the California State Capitol in Sacramento during a peaceful protest against Governor Newsom’s Lockdown on May 1st, 2020. He spoke on a dynamic level: honing in on his street-wise ex military cred (to better connect and release the tension between him and the guards) while eloquently and methodically speaking as a doctor who incorporates speeches and lectures into his practice. The informal yet compelling speech is what made this husband, father, and son an all-American hero and impromtu leader to the crowd that day. This is just what we need to ease our fellow citizen’s fear as it emboldens their hearts and minds in defence of their freedoms against abject tyranny.

I don’t know how many other non-polarizing patriots like Dr Williams who are out there in the world right now, but I hope this video encourages them to come to the forefront. These men—the ones with a spiritual and political backbone—form a new dimension of being on “the frontlines.” These individuals standing up for their communities brilliantly harness sound intellect and commonsense to expose generations of ideological dogma and complacency—and it’s waking people up. America has rested on her laurels for far too long. We so often forget that we stand on the shoulders of giants who planted the seeds before us, defending our crops from every beast and burden so that I —so that you—so that WE—can enjoy this cream of the crop free society today. Let us continue that and never ever take our liberties for granted: because they are not just merely inked on a 2D piece of paper gathering dust for the past 230 years, no, they are living and breathing in all of us and we must nurture and defend them everyday.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

So a couple of you guys left and a couple of you guys stood down, so the question is: are you going to stand down?

In the face of tyranny and the face of freedom are you going to sit there in your fight against peaceful protestors or are you going to say “You know what, it’s time to stand up for my country.” 

Because I took an oath of office that said I would stand up to all foreign enemies—both foreign and domestic. You might lose your job--but I’d rather lose my job than lose my soul. Because what are you going to go tell your little boy or little girl tonight? That you took aside and crushed somebody’s skull--who was a mom? Is that what a tough guy does? That’s not what honor, courage and commitment means in the Marine Corps. 

So the question is, do you say, you know we always have in the military, “what is a lawful order?”  And you got to check your nutsack when you’re given an order and ask yourself,  “is this a lawful order or a bullshit order?” And when something is a bullshit order and it doesn’t pass the sniff test, that’s when you say sergent, that’s when you say colonel, that’s when you say general, that’s when you say governor—“I’m not doing that, I didn’t sign up for that”. That’s what it takes.

So the question I want each and everyone of you to do is a nutcheck right now. And there’s guys over there that are lieutenants and there’s political gains happening right now and people are talking about people and there’s somebody over there looking at me with binoculars right now (sniper), God bless him, but what I want you to get is now is the time for you to decide what side of history do you want to be on. I’m serious, somebody’s gonna ask you that question. A bunch of people have video of everybody out here. It’s gonna be out there in the media, some of it is going to be fakes news. But there is going to be some of you that hit somebody, who threw pastor Jim down like a piece of trash—and he was just standing there—and that is going to be on your conscious. And so this isn’t a republican thing, this isn’t a democratic thing—even though Governor Newsom is making it that so President Trump doesn’t get back in the White House and we get sleepy creepy Uncle Joe back in there, right? 

 What I want you to get is this is a patriotic American thing, that’s what I want you to get. So the question is, you got a steady paycheck coming in but how many people right here, and pardon my language, are getting fucked right now? They’re getting fucked right now. And you guys are supporting that, endorsing that, by being here today and pushing people back with those batons, you’re endorsing that. You’re saying, “you know what, I’m ok with that. The guy up there with the creepy voice and the slick-back hair that wants to give $125 million to illegal immigrants-- you know, I’m alright with that. I’m alright with the fact that we can pounce on anyone that protests out here”—we were only here an hour and you guys were already starting to draw a line! And I get it, you guys are only trying to do your jobs but your job right now is to do a nutcheck. You’re job right now is to ask “is this ethical and moral?” And if it’s unethical and immoral then you don’t follow that order. It’s not constitutional.

 I talked to my master sergeant that I have not talked to in 10 years yesterday. And this guy was an ’03 ’11;  he did two tours in Desert Shield and Desert Storm and this guy is the most ethical guy I’ve had in my life and if he was a law enforcement officer he wouldn’t be standing up with a baton in his hand right now. He would be standing up to the people who were telling him to stand up with a baton in his hand right now. 

What would it look like if you guys all called in sick the next time you got called to do this? What if you stood up with the Sacramento PD? I’m texting the Sacramento PD office right now and who said their time is needed and they said “we’re not taking anybody they arrest.” So, your own comrades are telling you right now something doesn’t pass the sniff test. Something doesn’t pass the sniff test. If the Geneva Convention says that I can’t kill somebody or shoot somebody with a weapon that is sticking up for their rights and religious freedoms then I kind of think the constitution of the United States says the same thing. I kind of think it says the same thing.

So, I would encourage you guys just to think about that right now. As nobody up here is maintaining  their social distancing, that’s so interesting to me. Nobody. It’s so fascinating to me. People are talking in the background without their masks on but there’s no social distancing going on, it’s hilarious. So you have to see how ludicrous all this is and you guys are representing and endorsing that—everytime you stand up here, everytime you cash that paycheck, you’re saying “you know what, I’m ok with other people getting screwed and I’m ok with beating on childrens and mothers and moms and throwing a pastor on the ground.”

 So, I hope everybody thinks about the guy in the backwards hat standing up on the podium tonight, and if you get a heart palpatation its called anxiety, you can call me, I’m a doctor, I’ll help you out. So, we’re going to have to do a lot of neurological releasing on the neurological turmoil you’ve been put through.. [unaudible, music, crowd starts clapping]

UNRAVELING THE CAROLYN MYSTIQUE

It’s interesting how you look back on your life and the events that took place in your formative years. I remember right where I was in 1995 watching this black guy in a courtroom on tv who did something to his blonde wife and I remember the whole exercise room at Harborview in Edmonds, WA erupted in “what?!” My mom was on the StairMaster and she stopped what she was doing. I dropped my Fruit Jubes I was eating—something was up. I was only 8 but I remember all these adults were infuriated and I didn’t know all the details. Something just as memorable struck in the summer of 1999 as I was sitting in my Aunt’s living room and we were watching a Breaking News Segment on JFK jr and Carolyn. At the time I had just started getting my hands on the lustrous images of tabloid magazines—I was fascinated by people in bigger realms. Like, what makes this person so special? We’re still trying to answer that question with Carolyn: her essence is like a wink that continues to beguile us to this day.

My mom also had biographies on Camelot, as Jackie dubbed the brood. I didn’t know why until later: she grew up with the Kennedys and was an impressionable teenager when the handsome and charasmatic JFK got shot. Media figures have a profound effect on people in their coming of age years. Now that John Jr and Caroline were the sole survivors left in their immediate family, she—along with so many other Baby Boomers—latched on to the Kennedy soul of yesteryear through the offspring of Jackie and John.

Tabloid magazines were the closest thing to the internet of the day and JFKJR+CBK stories formed the monopolized beating heart of the press. Carolyn, being the newly-wed squeeze of America’s favorite First son was met with scrutiny—a theory as to why she dressed her fashion and personality so blandly to thwart the intense interest. She had a notorious, albeit, admirable blasé /FU attitude toward the media. Never did she give one interview—which caused the press to salivate even more over her ever-growing enigmatic lifestyle. Heck, John Jr can empathize with the press because her element of elusivity is what captivated him from the start: she ignored many of his phone calls in the beginning of their courtship. So interesting is it that love often culminates between the tension of romantic gesture and passive reciprocation. Carolyn didn’t have to play hard to get—she just was.

The woman had such delicate features if you isolated them—overall, she looked strong and almost harsh looking. She rarely ever wore a smidgen of makeup—her charming demeanor was her lipstick, killer humor her mascara. Her aesthetics were akin to the strong jaw facial structures of John’s past ladies—Daryl Hannah, Sarah Jessica Parker and Madonna. As a professional portrait artist I find the doppelgänger in everyone and although she possesses some of these physical similarities to these women, she cultivated her signature aura that made John’s former hunnies look like mere dalliances.

Her whole fashion aesthetic was wholesome classic--a tailored chic wardrobe that could do no wrong. Having been instrumental in getting Calvin Klein off the ground in the early 90s—oh, and coaxing him into signing Kate Moss, thus, launching her into USA stardom—she, nonetheless, shunned any attention to the credit and pronation to namedrop her stylish circle of comrades. She encapsulated au courant, even in her most understated looks. Carolyn was not flashy, but effortlessly stood out which gave her that “It Girl“ factor.

She was said to have not been photographed well, according to certain media outlets—her close friends said she actually looked a lot more beautiful in real life. Same with her personality: you couldn’t see her physical beauty through the lense just as much as you couldn’t see the vibrant funny individual she was, according to all of her confidants. Carolyn’s signature personality trait was making you feel like you were the only one in the world she cared about right then and there as she was talking to you.  It was the little things about Carolyn that caused her to be as gravitational as the moon is to the tide. The women was a tour de force in her interpersonal relationships. 

Somewhere between a french lavender macroon and a Nature’s Valley granola bar—trying to bite into Carolyn’s personality and peg her as this pretentious preppy princess only magnified her elusive gravitas and individuality stepping outside the shadow of John Jr’s. She was the salt-of-the-earth—the scarce kind that transformed the Middle Ages—and that the media would go to war for just to get some attention from her. And so would John Jr, like recognizing a raw diamond over a sparkling zirconium.  

The mystique of Carolyn Bassette Kennedy rests in an age representing a bygone era of dynamic feminine women. It seems to me all that captivates the press’es attention today is if you are dynamic and a feminist. It’s an unnerving revolution. The more I read about Carolyn’s deeply personal interactions she had with the people in her life the more that affirms my preconceived notions of her—I knew who she was before looking into her. She was kind of like me or a derivitive of my website tagline: “the New Girl Next Door".” The coexistance of modernity’s independent woman and traditional femininity slow-cooked into a woman at the turn of the 21st Century seems like a kaleidoscope of wonder to us—and Carolyn rolled right up to it’s intersection at the right place and the right time.

Since witnessing the scene on tv in the summer of 1999, I have always been quietly fascinated by JFK Jr and Carolyn—mainly because I think that’s how they would have wanted it if I came across them in public: they just wanted to blend in with the crowd, like “don’t make a spectacle out of us, please.” Carolyn and John would be the couple that crept out of their own party through the back door, trying to not have anyone notice. Seemingly one by one the party goers would notice a change in the mood—the music couldn’t mask the silence of these two people gone. It’s almost as if the wine lost its bubbly, the beer went flat. They left this world in the same way: under the radar, disappearing mid flight. That’s ironically where he felt the most free and alive. Having taken private lessons after his mother died (subsequently going against her wishes), he just wanted to escape the crowds/papz. They were obsessed with the Kennedy Prince—and airports only led to a higher concentration of them. 

Two people so sleek and modestly dressed were discretionary about sharing their lives to the public which only seemed to cajole more a hungry world seeking to unfold a new story that we now look back on: a celebrity’s fight against being known. This essence of the cool underpass power couple was like wholesale catnip to photographers that tabloid journalists sold to their end client: a devouring public feeding off every image and essay about John and Carolyn. 25 years later and we are still unsatiated, mainly because they never got to finish their story. So, we’re left trying to finish it for them and we fail everytime—because they are still so alive in spriit, arresting our hearts and minds, befuddling our imaginations of what coud be….

What athiesim does to a civilization

My mom sent me this picture and video today and flood of emotion—rage and empathy—came through me.

This is how I remember Veteran’s Day last week: through the stories of socialist dictatorships that killed off millions in the 20th century. We hear a lot about the European Holocaust but not so much the Holocaust that went on in Southeast Asia under the Khmer Rouge Regime (1975-1979) where almost 2 million people were murdered. I’ve never been to Vietnam but my mom and my dad recently came across real-life survivor Karl Levy (pictured with them) from that documentary The Killing Fields. He wrote a book called “Sinarth: a Dedication to Life” about his surviving through the Khmer Rouge Regime in Cambodia (1975-1979) under communist dictator Pol Pot. He was 9 when his family was massacred. 

Cambodian survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979)

My mom took me to the holocaust camp-turned museum Bergan Belsen in Germany in 1996 when I was only 9yrs old—long before any of my peers would even read about this in a textbook. Since then I have been to over 55 countries and wherever we went she always exposed us to the gritty history and greedy side of humanity. There’s this narrative out there in the classroom that wars are started over religion but atheism is at the core of socialist and communist dictatorships which have killed more people throughout history than any other power has.

When one believes there is no dignity to human life than one will carry out their own form of “religion” under the atheist/Darwinian tenants of evolution’s natural selection which is every man for himself. Even if you don’t believe in a supernatural God, all other humans will serve a god here on earth no matter what form that god is in. Souless men can therefore not look inwards for power, they have to look outwards for it which detaches them from God—and creates a nihilsitic approach to life. That’s why there is a silent massacre going on in the womb, too, with abortion claiming more than 60million unborns over the past four decades. More black babies are being aborted now (60%) than being BORN.

Freedom is not free. Feelings become thoughts, thoughts become actions, actions influence how we feel.

FAMILY PORTRAIT OF MY COMMERICAL FISHING FAMILY

It was 1988, the end of spring and the dawn of summer in Togiak, Alaska as fishermen were lined up eagerly awaiting the start of herring season. With only a half-hour window to set on fish that day, the herring season is one of the shortest and most intense fisheries out there--no place for amatures. Of the 239 seiners present, there stood out 30yr old captain Dean Anderson on his boat F/V "Susan Gale," a 49' fiberglass beauty named after my mother. Within those 30 minutes my dad would make one of the largest sets in herring history: 660 tons worth $600,000, a job that would take two tenders and 48 hours to pump out.  There was no internet, just one camera and a few fishermen to witness the scene. Serene yet so powerful, sentimental, nostalgic--those are the words that come to mind when I gaze at this snapshot of one of the largest herring sets ever made. It's taken 27 years to highlight this family gem: an immortalization of commercial fishing at its prime and a silhouette representing more than just a boat but of a legacy shaped by the captain himself--my dad.

 MAPPING OUT THE PAST

Even though the herring photograph displays the grandeur side of my dad's work ethic, being a commercial fisherman is far too romanticized in the movies and reality shows. Sometimes he put so much in but only got so much out of it--due to weather, crew, risky decisions, things beyond his control.  What is even more of a bittersweet realization is that my dad's golden catch fell on the 10th anniversary of his dad's fatal mid-air plane collision in the same region. My grandfather Raymond, also a fisherman, was a spotter pilot involved with discovering new herring grounds back in 1978. Out of that horrible tragedy would come this picture 10 years later--reigniting the legacy of herring exploration my grandfather left behind and highlighting his son's miraculous harvest in the same area.

My dad comes from a rich lineage of tough hard-working patriarchs and strong-willed matriarchs. Just as he started working the skiff at age 12 for his dad's boat, one can rewind 100 years back and 5,000 miles away in Scandanavia to see his great grandfather Oscar Lindholm signing up to be a seafarer at the age of 13. Born September 28, 1863, on Åland an island off the southwest coast of Finland, Oscar worked on ships for years before sailing to America. He later headed across the Atlantic, jumped ship in San Francisco and wasted no time getting involved with the Alaska Packer's Association (started in 1891) and lucrative fur trapping going on up north. Oscar soon made his way to Alaska to make a living as a fisherman and a trapper, eventually settling in a place called Chignik Lagoon. There, he would marry a native Aleut woman named Anne Stepanov Phillips, have five children and help pioneer the Chignik Salmon Fishery for generations of families to come.

I found out later through my dad that Oscar's early fur trapping base was in Mitrofania where my great grandmother was born. This mystified place just east of Perrysville is one of my dad's favorite fishing grounds--about a 6hr boat ride from Chignik. The village part of Mitrofania is abandoned but it is where Oscar and his wife had their first two children. One of them was my great grandmother Albertina. She who would later marry a fisherman Pete Anderson and take off alone with her four young children, one of them my grandfather Raymond, on a tender boat bound for Seattle. This was during WWII and Japanese sub sitings were common off the southeast coast of Alaska. It was a treacherous two weeks, but they made it having survived off only potatoes and dried fish.

Raymond would later come back up to Chignik to fish and start Anderson fisheries with my grandma Margaret (né Lindsey, a 2nd generation Alaskan born in Seward). They would have four children--Gene, Neil, Dean and Rhonda--and settle in Seward during the off season. All four kids would be involved with the salmon, cod, herring, halibut and crab fisheries in Alaska. My grandmother, a savvy and formidable woman in her time, carried on the family business (after Raymond passed so unexpecteldy) and is today a respected and admired Anderson matriarch known throughout her local community and statehood of Alaska.

This article came from the Seward Phoenix Log after Raymond passed away in '78 and she started running a large Herring Roe Extraction plant in Seward throughout the early '80s. Many new jobs were formed and Seward thrived as a whole from the business relations my Grandma was making with foreign countries like Japan.

A LAND FED BY THE SEA

Chignik rests on the western Gulf of the Pacific on the Aleutian Peninsula, west of Kodiak, east of Dutch Harbor. One can only get in by boat or small plane. Just shy of 100 residents, this place comes alive in the summer with veteran captains eager to set out their nets again, seasoned crew returning to their respective boats, greenhorns just joining and....

When Dean Met Susan. My mom came into my dad's life just weeks after the plane crash. This year they will be celebrating their 34th wedding anniversary.

It's also a place where a college girl hitch-hiked over three thousand miles from home to get a job one summer, met a fisherman and the rest is history. My mom would often give us glimpses into her so-called "courting life" at sea in that summer of 1978: "Your dad thought it would be funny to leave me on an iceberg an just start circling around it" she often brings up about some of my dad's endless pranks.

FISHY MATTERS

 The permits to fish in Chignik are passed down from generation to generation, most guys inheriting their father's if they are lucky. Otherwise, they go for a few hundred thousand dollars--reaching all the way up to $500,000 in the late 80s--that much money just for the priviledge to fish in this region! The highest prices out of the 5 species (chinook, coho, chum, sockeye, pink)  in our net is our "money fish" sockeye--hovering around a record $2.50/lb in '88. That is when the Japanese were buying up our salmon left and right. Our future competitors--the farm salmon industry--were taking notice and in the mid-90s started infilterating the market with farm-fed salmon.  That market would start to have a detrimental effect; eventually a breaking point came in 2001 when our price plummeted to $0.65/lb. and the fishermen went on a strike for a couple weeks. The plummet in salmon stock in 2006 was due to the 2001 over-escapement during the infamous strike causing a deluge of salmon to be born that next spring. There was not enough food in the lake for the fry to survive, so many died off. Commercial fishing has been a roller coaster over the years, nonetheless, both the farming and wild markets have opened up salmon to a broader populace. Now people are eating salmon who previously were not apt to buy it so this seafood is not just a novelty anymore but a nutritious protein source--more sustainable and higher quality in the wild version if you did your homework. My dad's favorite mantra?  "Friends don't let friends eat farmed salmon."

My sister Sierra, a talented videographer, captured a lot of the ups and downs of our commercial fishing business over the years. Someone caught sight of her videos on youtube and a reality show was born "Hook Line And Sisters." in 2011. Here is a funny behind the scenes video:

http://youtu.be/AS_7lhWwSrY

Filming "Hook, Line and Sisters" | Summer Chignik 2011

THE DEAN MACHINE

In my early years we took the Pen Air small planes to get to Chignik but started taking the M/V Tustumena ferry when airfare went up. We--my siblings Shelby, Sierra, Memry, and our mom--would always stumble off the ferry like a semi-homeless family, a little haggard from the ride over as my dad was there to greet us.  I could never exactly tell from his face what looked like a combination of either overwhelming dread of emotions or  gratefulness for us being there to "help" him out for the summer.

Sierra, mom, Shelby and dad on their first boat F/V Autumn Gale (bought after they were married in 1982) | Summer 1986, Chignik 

Trying to hide from my dad or just trying to escape from each other? We kids all had our places of refuge to chill (I was probably up on the crows nest, out of frame, in this picture)

My dad is such a character. The guy had more holes in his $20 Kirkland Signature pants than a $70 pair of Abercrombie Destroyed classics. It looked like his pants experienced a shootout because the holes in the front aligned with the holes in the back--reminiscent of all the snags and tears working down in the engine room that tore up his clothing. He wore a makeshift belt to hold his Victrinox knife he created with ducktape and a Grundin's suspender strap. He often lost weight within the first few weeks of the season opener, especially when my mom was not onboard to feed him. He fed his boat hull with salmon and that would sustain his mental appetite but not his physical. He had more strength to pull in rogue net than two guys his age put together. The first cologne I ever knew was my father's: a combination of Diesel engine fuel and salmon masked by his signature Old Spice deodorant. His hands one could get confused with an eighteenth century topography map. His back would often bother him and he developed a nagging "ringing" in his ears over the years due to the not-so-melodic sounds of working on a fishing boat his whole life. My sisters have to remind him to get hearing aids but he doesn't listen to us. Regardless of age, his genuine enthusiasm, self-motivation and a hard work ethic will forever keep him going in the world of commercial fishing.

GOT LOX? Sierra and Memry prepping fish for the smoker and brine, Chignik, AK. Both fished with our dad throughout their 20s

Whenever we left from Lower48 for Alaska, I felt like an outcast from my normal friends who I pictured spending those months going to amusement parks, checking out aquariums, taking leisure tropical vacations. In hindsight I had all of those, just packaged in a different way. My family's boat was the amusement park, essentially from the outside an aquarium where jellyfish and starfish rained down on us when we brought in the net. Inside the cabin all 6 of us would fight over the last avocado (long story short, its really difficult to get fresh produce up there) or call out the person who just used up all the water in the tanks to take a shower in our 2.5sq foot bathroom. My dad would also travel miles away to remote areas where there were no other boats because he insisted that's where the fish were. Sometimes he was way off his mark and other times we hit the jackpot but he taught me to keep on casting the net in life. Even on our closures my dad kept us on our toes to get ready for the next opener–there was always maintenance to do, cleaning around the boat, sewing up net, you name it = he thought of it.

Growing up in this atmosphere, I learned whether we had a good day or a bad day out there, life happens in the hustle--not just the catch. Fishing is a story of unconditional love between man and boat along with the heritage that brought them together–that’s where my dad’s heart will always be.