oughly 130 miles north of Anchorage, at the corner of the Parks Highway and Susitna River Road, a plywood sign is nailed to two felled tree trunks. The letters ‘TCBG’ and an arrow pointing to the right are scribbled cryptically on the makeshift sign. The paved road quickly dissipates and is replaced by a pothole-filled dirt road scarcely wide enough for two cars to pass each other unscathed. About the time you begin to wonder if you somehow took a wrong turn, another plywood sign emerges and directs you further into wilderness. Tall trees line both sides of the road that becomes rockier with every mile journeyed. Several minutes later, a single-lane bridge emerges to shuttle cars across a sm

Art has always been a part of Maxine Fekete’s life. From the time she could walk, she would spend endless days playing with splatter paint in the backyard with her six siblings. Her mother, an avid thrift shopper, would often bring home old canvases and furniture for the kids to paint. “I have three adopted brothers and I think the earliest memory I have of them was my mom putting us in bathing suits and letting us loose with paint in the backyard,” Fekete says with a fleeting smile. “One time, I found an old portfolio of airbrush drawings and for years I assumed they were my mother’s because she was the artistic one. It still surprises me to know that my dad had created them.” By the time F