When deadline panic led to a Christmas classic by a great Fairbanks artist

Tim Ames was desperate that December day in 1988.

“I was in a blind panic,” he wrote. “I had been asked to paint a cover for Heartland magazine; the theme was ‘Christmas in Fairbanks.’”

“I had plenty of ideas, but they all stank. Street scenes were out. Second Avenue was more parking lots than buildings and most of the Christmas bustle was in the malls. Was there no traditional theme dear to all Fairbanksans? Had the town grown so large and impersonal?”

Tim Ames, the Fairbanks artist who painted “Christmas at the Co-op.”

“I was on the verge of developing a nervous rash when an old friend gently reminded me, ‘If you’re looking for the heart of Fairbanks, why don’t you try the Co-op? Before the pipeline, long before the malls, there was the Co-op. That was where everyone did their Christmas shopping.”

His beautiful painting of the Co-op lunch counter, later turned into a postcard, is populated with likenesses of people he knew and some he imagined he had known—Santa Claus and a couple of elves for example. Ames placed himself in the painting, smiling from the far right at customers and friends behind the counter.

If there is a list of people who are featured in the painting, I haven’t found it. I think that is Bill Kennedy, the longtime manager of the Co-op photo shop on the right. Perhaps some of my readers can help with a who’s who.

Ames was an artist who grew up in Fairbanks and earned a degree in theater from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1975. He earned acclaim for his set designs with national opera companies and made his mark on theatrical designs in Fairbanks, Anchorage and Outside. One of the signs of his immense talent is that when faced with immediate deadline pressure, he came up with a Christmas classic. It’s not “Nighthawks” by Edward Hopper, a portrait of loneliness in the city. it’s “Christmas at the Co-op” by Tim Ames, a portrait of the place where everyone met everyone.

Here is what Tim wrote about his painting and his memories of the Co-op.

By the next Christmas, Ames was gone. Dead at 36.

Among the great works of art he left us is this Christmas card.