We tend to associate the word "art" with vision, creativity, talent, inspiration, maybe even the sublime, but making art requires something far more prosaic: labor.
Sara Tabbert makes it a point to take painstaking care in her work. The Fairbanks artist lays a hand on every facet and detail of her work, drawing subject matter from everything, from the delicacy of a broken branch to the intimacy of water over stones.
Her latest body of work, "Near Water," appears at the Anchorage Museum through Jan. 25. It consists of wood-block prints, wood cuts, glass mosaic pieces and collaged prints made with Japanese paper.
"Everything I do has to have a ridiculous amount of labor," she said. "I guess I like picky stuff."
As a serious musician, she studied the violin, learning the value of hard work from her teacher. Later she carried that ethic into the art studio when she took a drawing class from Bill Brody of Fairbanks, also a printmaker.
"I was bad at it, but it was the most interesting thing I'd ever done," said Tabbert, 38.
Brody appreciates her humility but remembers things quite differently. He knew her as a little girl but claims no influence on her as an artist. When she took his beginning drawing class he remembers her intense curiosity, effort and interesting ideas.
"I can see that she has a real work ethic," Brody said. "She works hard and diligently, completes things and is quite prolific. Her pieces are well-made objects. She has the imagination and passion, and her craft and work ethic are the toolkit she applies to realizing that passion."
Nowadays Brody collects her work and is currently negotiating a trade. "I'm a wood-cut artist myself and really appreciate her wit, her vision, her intelligence. She gives art and artists a good name."
THE ARTFUL SEASON
Some people work all summer to put things aside for the cold months when life feels thin and hard; Tabbert works all summer to prepare for the thick slab of bountiful winter when she can make art.
She used to work as a seasonal employee in the tourism industry in Denali National Park but now cares for plants and organic produce in the warm months while also doing part-time respite care. For her, tending to the needs of others helps her keep perspective.
"Art is such a selfish endeavor," she said. "We try so hard to make it seem like we do it to make the world a better place, but we really just indulge ourselves."
Of course, others call it forging an artist's life. Her former graduate adviser, Karen Kunc of the University of Nebraska, admires Tabbert's willingness to lead a less conventional life to make art.
Even now, a decade after Tabbert finished her degree, Kunc uses her former student as an example of someone with "a singular dedication to being an artist and doing sideline, seasonal jobs that enable her to have large blocks of time in the winter to make art."
Well, and to go skijoring.
After seeing her show on the walls of the museum this month, Tabbert looked relaxed, even relieved, and quite happy to think about hitting the trails and hills around her home in the Goldstream Valley, where she lives with a carpenter and dogs.
As for the art, "it's not all that precious to me," she said. "I'm concerned with quality and am completely involved when making it, but when I'm done, I'm done."
She has kept maybe two pieces she won't sell, but the rest ends up in galleries, homes, cabins, who knows where?
Yolande Fejes, owner of The Alaska House in Fairbanks, has carried Tabbert's work for 10 years and features a full exhibit every two years.
"Whenever we have an exhibit with Sara, the response is huge, and sales reflect that," she said. "She has a lot of people who follow her work. There are people traveling to Anchorage just to see her exhibit."
Tabbert sees the natural world from an unusual perspective because of her connection with the outdoors as a "true child of the wilderness," Fejes said. "She's not just looking at it, she's living in it. She lives in a cabin without running water, and there's something different about being in the wilderness, the natural sphere, and not just visiting it."
Alaska's Interior woodlands and waterways certainly appeal to Tabbert, but she also appreciates the attitude of its inhabitants. In Fairbanks, "people don't classify you by how you live," she said. "You'll never know here for sure whether someone is a taxi driver or a university professor by the way they dress or what they drive."
As such, she feels free to live the way she wants, often with very little and still knowing "those choices don't marginalize me the way they might in other places."
PRINTMAKER AT HEART
"Near Water" deals in the microscopic-like cosmos of waterways through the lines and shapes of the stones, branches and other objects that intersect with it. Tabbert developed some of her ideas and pieces during residencies at the Klondike Institute for Art and Culture in Dawson, Yukon, in 2007 and in Denali National Park and Preserve this year.
The exhibit reflects on her relationship with the natural environment and reinforces her love of printmaking.
"You're doing all your work on another object, but it's the paper that's the piece of art," Tabbert said. "It's indirect, and that's the appeal, the surprise."
The process allows small decisions to add up to something significant and say something about how choices work in the world, Kunc said.
"I also think there's something rather comforting about an involved process," she continued. "You have to work on such a small scale that the big issues don't bother you so much, yet you get to think that every little step adds up to something important and significant. You're rebuilding and reusing natural forms, re-creating nature, preserving it."
In "Near Water," Tabbert offers translations of the natural world by using small segments to represent the whole.
"It's not political, not confessional, not about me at all," she said. "I just see, observe and make it."
Find Daily News reporter Dawnell Smith at dsmith@adn.com.
By DAWNELL SMITH
dsmith@adn.com