Generally speaking it’s a bit unusual to find a fashion model laying out on Sandy Beach in November, and considerably more unusual for her never to leave her resting spot as she’s hit by tides and snow.
But people walking to the southern portion of the sand about a half mile from the parking lot have been having head-to-head encounters with the South African woman much of this month, although not everyone might be aware of her presence. She’s a creation of Blake Byers, an artist living aboard a sailboat who’s been in Juneau during recent months, who spent 10 days early in November recreating her face from a photo using nearby rocks and an overhead drone to monitor his progress.
“Everything is found in location, which is one of the hardest parts — trying to figure out where to do it,” he said during an interview Sunday.
“The layout is the first step, the process of location and then obviously materials. And then gathering those materials, organizing them in a way if I can, or if I don’t then I’m usually just walking around with a bucket and I’ll make piles. (I) fly a drone initially to take a photograph from above and that’s the beginning.”
An artistic replica of a South African model is seen on the surface of Sandy Beach as the tide slowly ebbs away at its features on Monday. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Empire)
The face, roughly 25 feet in diameter, was still recognizable as Monday when seen from above, although tides and shifting sands are slowly ebbing away at her features. Paul and Katy Prussing, walking their dog at midday Monday, said they’ve seen the creation being built and then left exposed to the elements.
“At first it was like just not very much, but it already had taken shape enough because he added some drone pictures of it that I had seen online and it took shape enough that you could tell what it was,” Katy Prussing said. “And then as he filled it in more and more. It was really cool one time — there was a period of a high tide where a whole bunch of pine needles had come to shore and they had kind of a red tint to them, and they kind of were on the hair of it. And I thought ‘Oh, he added a red tint to the hair.’ I saw it in the Instagram. And then I remembered ‘Oh, that was Mother Nature adding highlights.”
The beach art in Douglas is the most prominent — or least the most easily accessible — of a few projects he’s done in Southeast Alaska, with others coming on small remote beaches that are uninhabited and thus may only end up being “fully” seen by people flying by above. Other works in the region, and further south on the Pacific Coast during a trip there, have included his girlfriend as well as models he knows through his longtime work as a photographer.
Byers said he got his first camera at the age of eight and has spent much of his life as a photographer and then a street artist in Southern California, doing everything from stencil art to a mural for a Sacramento business made of 35,000 golf tees. But he said a decade ago, about the time he hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, he got the urge to do his artwork “in a naturalistic environment” rather than his urban works.
“I didn’t find that to be really healing or sustainable in a positive way,” he said. “I didn’t want to be a commercial artist, I guess it was just sucking the life out of me in a way. And so I felt like doing something along (naturalistic) lines would have some kind of solace for me.”
Blake Byers places rocks along the outline of a model’s face being recreated on Sandy Beach in early November. (Photo by Blake Byers)
Byers said he finally came north in his sailboat just before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing the divisiveness he felt in the country as motivation, and Alaska initially wasn’t his intended destination.
“I was trying to sail to England so it was kind of like a pit stop in a way,” he said. “And when I got up through the Inside Passage through Canada I just found Alaska to be so marvelous and charming, and it was healing and there was solace there. And I would disappear into these islands on my boat for months at a time.”
That is when his artwork in the wild started showing up.
“As an artist I just I couldn’t help myself but to do something, and then I started thinking about maybe using the natural elements as a medium and what that would look like, and how that might be perceived,” Byers said.
Byers said his first inclination when starting his natural art projects while still in California was “paint on rocks using natural pigments that would fade or wash away over time, and where the ephemeral painting came into play.”
“The paints that I would be using would be like natural pigments,” he said. “They’re pigments of clay to coal to things that are found on the Earth that would mix with water…So it’s almost like it would be a chalk drawing at the end of the day. And I did do one of those on a Forest Service float where I did use chalk and I did it in, I think, like a couple of days. And then right when I was finished it started raining and it was cool to watch the rain just completely delete it.”
A likeness of a French model created largely with shells and black limestone rock is seen on a beach on an island near Kake. (Photo by Blake Byers)
The possibility some people might not appreciate finding artwork when out in what they presume is unspoiled wilderness is a consideration, Byers said. But he said his works are short-lived and the response he gets to them is almost entirely positive.
“I felt like the majority of people would get it and I felt like the majority of people would find it to be interesting,” he said. “And maybe that conversation would be something that would even unite people in a way, without having to get into some really strong disconcerting relationship about what they believe in politically. So that’s kind of the why I went that direction and the reason why I’ve been doing them, and I think I’m going to keep doing them.”
Byers started doing his work on Sandy Beach during the first days of November and departed without any “exhibition” when it was finished, aside from the constant updates he posted on his social media pages. He said he hopes to return to Juneau and elsewhere in the coming months to do more projects, which given the time of year will likely involve images created in the snow.
“It’s like going cross-country skiing in a way,” he said. “You just get prepared and then you make moves and you go to location, and then I have a feeling that I’m probably going to make some kind of temporary camp where I can operate off of that out of that location. So if I do get really cold then I can build a fire on the shoreline or something along those lines. Or Hothands (warmers) — I mean that’s the trick. I think Hothands is going to be a game-changer. Plus I have a survival suit that I’ll probably be romping around in.”
An depiction of artist Blake Byers’ girlfriend, Alyssa James, is seen on a grass surface covered with snow in Oregon. Byers says he created the image using a garden sprayer. (Photo by Blake Byers)
In between projects Byers still makes a living by selling his artwork and doing requested projects, plus he’s done other work including using his sailing experience to get a job working as a gillnetter for the first time during the past summer. He said he’s hoping support for his outdoor works will allow him to take his boat to more areas to create them over time.
“The draw for me in doing something like that is maybe hopefully inspiring people to think outside the box and enjoy a principle that is not normal or orthodox in a way,” he said. “And maybe pushing that envelope would open up people’s minds to do something — not necessarily the same thing, but maybe going for something they’ve always wanted to do. Or having maybe even people (who have others) in their life telling them that they’re not going to succeed and then just saying (expletive) it. I’m going to do it anyway.”
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
An artistic face created by artist Blake Byers is partially submerged by the tide. (Photo by Blake Byers)
