Daily Sitka Sentinel

Colombian Artist Sees Lots of Color in Sitka

By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer
    Colombian Daniel Suarez infused his own experiences in Sitka into historic photographs by E.W. Merrill to create paintings of Sitka and its people.
    “I used these pictures because he is very known here and his pictures are very iconic of Sitka, the history of Sitka,” said Suarez, 26.
    Suarez, who departs Sunday, has been one of two artists-in-residence here under a partnership between the Colombian Ministry of Culture and the Sitka Fine Arts Camp.
    The other Colombian artist in residence was masked theater and puppet artist Jorge Mario Agudelo Echeverry, who left earlier this week. He put on a puppet workshop for Sitkans of all ages, and put on a puppet and mask theater performance last Friday.
    Suarez’s Merrill-inspired paintings will be on display until 6 p.m. today and from 2 to 6 p.m. Saturday at the Fine Arts Camp’s Yaw Art Building on the SJ campus.
    The Colombian artist residency, now in its fourth year, calls on the visiting artists to engage with the Sitka community and prepare a final show or exhibit at the end. The artists also put on an exhibit in their home country at the House of Culture in Bogota.
    “I think it’s great for cultural exchange,” said Kenley Jackson, Sitka Fine Arts Camp program director. “It’s a chance for Sitkans to meet new artists and see their community reflected back through someone else’s perspective. We always try to connect the artists with youths, so young people have a chance to learn about life and art in another place.”

Bogota, Colombia, artist Daniel Suarez talks about artwork he made while in residence in Sitka, Thursday at an exhibition in the Yaw Art Center on the SJ campus. He was here under a partnership between Sitka Fine Arts Camp and Colombian Ministry of Culture. His oil and watercolor paintings were inspired by the early 20th century photographs of E.W. Merrill and the palette of Sitka’s fall colors. (Sentinel Photo by James Poulson)

    Sitkans stopped by the opening of the art exhibit Thursday night to see the artwork Suarez created over the past month and ask questions. Some of the pictures on the walls are preliminary sketches he made in preparation for the final paintings.
    The paintings may look familiar to those who know Merrill’s photographs, but Suarez added colors to the images to reflect his experiences here. One painting includes the pink he saw in Indian River salmon.
    Suarez said his time here was divided into three segments.
    “The first 10 days I was having the experience here and looking at light, colors, going out, going to the forest, going to the river,” he said. “It was shocking because I’ve never been out of the country where I live.”
    Since he grew up in Bogota, and still lives in an urban area, his art in the past included a lot of gray.
    “Here you have too many colors I’ve never seen,” Suarez said.
    His second 10 days were spent honing in on images that interested him, which is what led him to Merrill’s photographs. He selected a variety of images, some of which included Sheldon Jackson students, Russian Orthodox Church parishioners, and others showing just buildings and landscapes from historic Sitka.
    “I tried to put the colors of my experience into the photographs,” Suarez said. “Sometimes it has conceptual meaning; sometimes it’s just studies of colors.”
    His final 10 days were spent preparing for his public exhibition.
    Suarez is a graduate of the National University of Colombia, where he earned his fine arts degree. Born and raised in Bogota, he has spent the last 13 years nearby in Chia.
    He said that when he was young, he thought he would grow up to study medicine, but from an early age was drawn to the images in the anatomy books.
    “It was like an obsession,” he said. “When I was a teenager I started to paint, and draw, and made a decision (to study art).”
    Suarez said his time in Sitka has opened him up to a new community and new colors.
    “It’s an experience I never had,” he said. “I’ve learned a lot about the people of this space, of the history. Everything I learned was important. In my process ... I’ve never painted with so many colors. I used to paint monochromatically, with gray. Here I found color.”
    Suarez said he plans to continue his work, leading up to a more polished show for the Colombian Ministry of Culture exhibit and for shows in other places around the country.
    “That’s important to me, to continue creating,” he said.