School named for Iditarod founder gets mushing mural

WASILLA — Students at Joe Redington Sr. Jr./Sr. High School are about to gain an enormous visual understanding of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and the race founder for whom their school is named.

Thanks to the Alaska Percent for Art Program — which reserves one percent of the capital construction costs of public buildings for the acquisition and permanent installation of artwork — the Mat-Su Borough was able to commission Anchorage photographer Kevin Smith for a 72-by-9-foot mural, which will be installed this weekend.

“I think it’s going to be really educational and inspirational for the kids,” said Redington principal Tom Lytle, who serves on the school’s Percent for Art committee.

The mural consists of 220 images captured by various photographers, including Smith and even Joe Redington Sr. himself. Not including the time it took to track down and choose photos for the project, the digital file of the piece took 350 hours to complete, Smith said.

“It took a lot longer than I was expecting but turned out much better than I ever hoped for,” Smith said.

The top half of the mural details the life and times of Knik’s Redington, including his experiences homesteading, commercial fishing, big game guiding, runnin an air taxi service, airplane salvaging and mushing. The bottom half shows Redington in “The Last Great Race” with many familiar faces, such as four-time Iditarod champions Susan Butcher, Lance Mackey and Martin Buser. The mural also works as a kind of timeline, in that each Iditarod photo is placed in order of the race checkpoints.

“There’s a lot of information to process there, and that’s kinda the whole idea — to make murals that are, visually, really complex and interesting, so that every time you look at it you see something different,” Smith said.

He said he felt “lucky” to be able to work with Redington’s sons, Raymie and Joey (Joe Jr.), who helped identify people, places and dates that corresponded to their father’s photos.

Raymie’s wife, Barb Redington, was also in on the project.

“It's a wonderful tribute to Joe himself, and to … the way he grew up,” she said.

Already there are several tributes to Redington on display in the school, such as an old dog sled in the library and one of four-time champion Jeff King’s Iditarod trophies (which bears Redington’s likeness) in a main-floor display case, which King lent to the school for the duration of the 2016 race.

Smith said the mural is printed on a stretchy, spandex-like fabric that can snap around an existing surface with elastic of bungee cord strength. The work of art will cover a long length of acoustic paneling in the multipurpose, which Smith said may actually enhance the acoustics of the space.

“There are a lot of different ways to apply the photo medium,” he said.

Lytle said he’s counting on this particular application to open his students’ minds in that regard.

“When you say ‘art’ to them, there’s usually one and only one image of art that comes to mind,” he said. “(The mural) gives kids the idea that art isn’t just limited to one facet.”

Since the mural is in a public building, parents and other friends and family members will also be able to appreciate it when they come in for events, conferences, or just to pick students up from school.

A plaque will be installed below the mural to explain the piece and credit the following contributors: the Redington Family; Iditarod photographers Jeff Schultz and Rob Stapleton; Alaska artist Bill Devine; Iditarod veterans Richard Burmeister and Howard Farley; the Anchorage Museum; the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and -Anchorage archives; and the Alaska State Library.

Prep work and installation of the mural is set to occur March 18-20.

Contact reporter Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Burmeister was deceased.