He sat there in his studio, stared at the TV and cried.
Jack Gunter had just watched a Blu-ray disc of his long-anticipated documentary “The Quest for the Lost Paintings of Siberia.” It was the first time he’d seen it all put together, with titles, sound, credits, etc.
If you know the Camano Island-based artist, the tears might be a surprise — because you just know the movie just has to include a lot of laughs. And it does.
Maybe he cried because of the dedication of the film to his late brother. Maybe it’s that the long strange trip is finally over. Maybe the melancholy had something to do with a beautiful egg tempera painting he meditatively makes throughout the course of the film.
We will attempt to “review” the film in next week’s A&E, but for now know that you can see this moving work of art at 7 p.m. April 21 at the Historic Everett Theatre, 7 p.m. April 29 at the Lincoln Theatre in Mount Vernon and then later in May at the Stanwood Cinemas. Tickets will be $12 at the door.
Gunter, well-known in the arts community that floats between Snohomish, Island and Skagit counties, often takes jabs at government and cultural convention.
A proposal in the 1980s to establish a commercial airline runway in north Snohomish County gave rise to a series of paintings that were seen a few years later by a group of Soviet tourists that was in Snohomish County to study economic development.
Gunter was invited by his new friend Valerian Ivanchenko from the group to show the paintings in the USSR in 1989, and the artist obliged. A year later, Gunter returned to pick up the paintings, but was forced to leave his work there because of a customs dispute and lost paperwork.
Nearly 25 years later, Gunter raised the money to return to the city of Akademgorodok, a Siberian academic center of science and culture. Local filmmaker friends Jesse Collver and Ken Rowe were in tow to document the trip. They found the paintings in the basement of a museum and the adventure continued.
All of this was covered by the Everett Herald over the course of several years.
The team returned home and the work of splicing together the documentary began. Gunter and Collver added animation, Patrick Donicht provided an original score and the film is narrated by Ed Bednarczyk. After more than a year of work, it is ready to be seen.
“I am so excited,” Gunter said. “I think people are going to like it.”
Watch the trailer here: https://youtu.be/FG9wvlHarUk.
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