Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

A celebration of life was held June 14 in Clarkston, Wash. for Sherry Takala, a free-thinking artist and adventurer who operated "Noah's Art," an offbeat gallery and hostel set up in a beached barge on Lutak Inlet during the mid-1980s.

"She'd do things like that wherever she went. She'd take things and create other things out of them," daughter Kathleen Gilman said this week.

Takala, 76, died of ovarian cancer June 5 at Gilman's house in Clarkston.

She was born Sherry Mallory on May 26, 1938 to dairy farmers Wallace and Adlissa Mallory of Logan, Utah. She was the oldest of eight children and learned how to draw early in life, illustrating stories told to her by relatives. She also received training in ballet, her daughter said.

Takala left home at a young age and lied about her age to get jobs as a dancer and showgirl at clubs and casinos around Reno, Nev., her daughter said.

"She basically was a showgirl. She danced in a cage or she would swing on a swing, whatever the show required. She had me and my brother at home to raise," Gilman said.

Takala worked as a dancer, including at Lake Tahoe, until injuring her back after being thrown by a horse. She continued working in casinos, as a keno writer and pit boss, until her early 30s. She also earned money by making commissioned art, including painting portraits.

She once used rocks to create a statue of a buffalo that was purchased by a bank, her daughter said. "She just put them together to make this shape. There were even pieces of jade in it. It took four guys to get it out of the house. And that's how she paid for me and my brother to have our tonsils out."

Takala also gave art classes, her daughter said. "For us it was nothing to walk in to the house and there'd be all these people sitting around easels, and often a live model. We thought nothing of naked bodies because we'd see them all the time."

After leaving the casinos,Takala worked a succession of jobs, including as a counselor to abused women at a YWCA in Lewiston, Idaho. "She was really a restless person. She got bored easily. We went to a lot of different schools in the course of a year," her daughter said.

Living in Clarkston in the late 1970s, she met Steve Takala, who worked for road contracting companies. They shared a dream of living in Alaska, partly due to a lung cancer diagnosis, her daughter said. "She thought she was dying and she wanted an adventure." The cancer went into remission, an experience she wrote about in a book she wrote called, "My Healing Path."

Takala attributed her recovery in part to her study of medicinal herbs, her daughter said. "She studied herbs and alternative medicine. Any problem, she knew what herb would help."

In Alaska, Takala and her husband mined in the Porcupine, then moved to Lutak, taking up residence in KP-10, a beached landing craft barge once used as a floating logging camp. She renamed the place "Noah's Art." Inside she sold art, gave painting lessons, and operated a snack bar and tackle shop selling used Pixie lures.

Lutak resident Jim Wilson once lived beside the Takalas, in a floathouse on the beach there. He remembered Sherry as an entertaining and kind-hearted person who would rent rooms even to questionable transients. "She had a big heart. Once or twice they had crazies in there they had to get rid of."

Takala was a bridge player who read Tarot cards and dabbled in channeling spirits, he said. "She felt there were psychic energies she could tap into from time to time." Those traits, he said, "just made her more fun to be with," Wilson said.

Gilman said Steve Takala's passion for fishing left her with a big workload and little time to paint, so they left Alaska in the late 1980s for an adventure in Mexico. In subsequent years she also lived in the Idaho towns of Lava Hot Springs, Orofino and Kamiah. She worked as a radio operator for the Department of Homeland Security in northern Idaho toward the end of her life, and continued giving painting lessons. Steve Takala died in 2005.

Gilman said her mom's legacy is the creations she left on old saws, gold pans and bear bread. "She painted landscapes, animals, flowers. If she saw something neat, she'd paint it. It didn't matter what it was."

Takala was preceded in death by her parents, Wallace and Adlissa Mallory; her brother, Brett Mallory; and by her husband, Steve Takala. She is survived by brothers Kim of Logan, Utah; Cleve of Nevada; and Ronnie Mallory of Soda Springs, Idaho; and by sisters Vicki Wolfsen, Oregon; and Lara Coley, Idaho. She also is survived by her daughter, Kathleen; son-in-law Lloyd Gilman; and their children, Tawnia, Tennille, Zack, and Porsha, of Asotin, Wash .; and by great-grandson Clark Gilman; and also by her son, Bill Carver, Clarkston, Wash .; daughter-in-law Cindy; and grandson James Carver.

Takala's life celebration was held at a community center where she gave painting classes.