By Sue Bergstrom for Valdez City News –
Although she makes, displays and sells beautiful things, Jan Whalen is above all a teacher and an advocate for making art.
“Art is just as important as any other subject in school, and it should be part of EVERY person’s day, every day. Our brains need art activities.”
If you’ve lived in Valdez for any length of time, you probably know who Jan Whalen is. She has taught in the Valdez schools, is an active member of the Lutheran Episcopal Church and serves on the Connecting Ties board of directors. She is a vocal advocate for the arts, education and people with disabilities. Jan taught art to her students in public schools in both Oregon and Alaska. She says that when she taught full-time she did art projects with her classes every day. Although she no longer teaches every day for Valdez City Schools, she does volunteer to teach art to FOCUS Homeschool students.
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One of the other places Jan teaches art is the Valdez Museum Summer Art Camp, a week-long, themed camp that combines art lessons inside the museum with outdoor projects. Some of the activities take place in a tent in the museum’s parking lot and others at various outdoor locations around Valdez.
Jan has taught at Cultural Heritage Week in Tatitlek for the last twelve years. The annual Tatitlek Cultural Heritage Festival , also known as the Peksulineq Festival, is a week-long annual event hosted by the Native Village of Tatitlek that celebrates the traditional culture of the Chugach Region. During the week, students attend classes to learn traditions such as songs, dances, crafts, fish processing, and language from elders and teachers. Volunteer teachers have been a big part of the event since its inception.
She says she’s always been interested in art, but she never had money to spare for art supplies until she began teaching. Like most teachers, she is also often a student. Once she had a position with the Baker City, Oregon schools, she took every art class that was offered at the local artist’s co-op. She learned about spinning and pottery, tole painting, which is decorative painting on wood or tin utensils and furniture, and macramé. She even took theater and belly dancing. Jan says that here in Valdez she has taken Art 101 at Prince William Sound College several times and always learns something new.
Her current passion is hand-modeled clay birdhouses, dishes and what she calls critter pots. Hand-modeling or hand-building is done, as the name implies, by shaping the clay with the hands rather than using a mold or a potter’s wheel. Items may be painted and otherwise decorated either before or after they are fired in a kiln to remove excess moisture and cause it to harden. Jan also spins, weaves, makes baskets, pottery and jewelry, paints, quits, makes drums and carves.
Jan Whalen’s work can be seen at the Valdez Museum. She will also have pottery at this year’s Christmas Bazaar.
