As a boy on Kodiak Island, Alvin Amason learned so much: “How to pick bird eggs, get octopus, dig clams, watch and predict the weather, and know the safe beaches in a storm.” He was born in 1948 of Sugpiaq – or Alutiiq – ancestry and raised in a family with a history of trapping, fox farming, commercial fishing and bear guiding. He spent his youth observing the natural world in Kodiak, keeping a journal to record stories of elders and local characters.
Amason with Steve Harvey’s Grumman Widgeon.These visual impressions and recorded memories served as inspiration for his formation as an artist who specializes in distinctive portraits of Alaska wildlife. His animals are rendered in bright colors of paint and sculptural relief, so alive that they appear only momentarily at rest. He draws upon the deep well of closeness between humans and animals and respect for wildlife that is central to his heritage.
"Everything I Love is Here" is inscribed on his monumental mixed-media bear that greets visitors to new Rasmuson Wing at the Anchorage Museum. The inscription also describes the body of work of one of Alaska’s most acclaimed artists.
Amason in his studio. Photograph by Jenny Irene Miller.In addition to his career as a successful painter and sculptor, Amason has mentored generations of artists. He served as director of Native Arts at the University of Alaska Fairbanks for 17 years and later developed an Alaska Native Arts curriculum and studio at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Students have come from across Alaska and around the world: Metlakatla and Point Hope, Japan and Norway, many points between.
"The one thing that I like to impress upon them is that they come in with their own experiences and some with skills," he says. "These are great and valid places to start exploring, to start these journeys in making art."
Big Sum Bich, Alvin Amason, 2016
Fellowships
Armin Abdihodzic
Anchorage
Presentation & Interpretation
Abdihodzic will purchase a hand-made concert-level instrument from renowned California luthier Gregory Byers that is customized to his technical and interpretational requirements. He will travel to California, Texas and Virginia to study with contemporary composers for guitar who are masters in solo works.
Brian Adams
Anchorage
Visual Arts
Adams will travel to Canada, Greenland and Russia to document the lives of Inuit people through portraiture and photo essays for his second book, "I am Inuit." He intends to push himself and add depth to his work as he learns about Inuit cultures across the Arctic.
Dolores Catherino
Anchorage
Music Composition
Catherino plans to create and document a major musical work in what she has termed a "polychromatic musical language," a system she developed for an expanded palette of sound. She plans to upgrade her equipment, pursue training and attend an international conference. She will integrate sophisticated technology with the flexibility and expressive strength of traditional acoustical instruments.
Susan Stark Christianson
Juneau
Media Arts
Christianson will interview indigenous elders in Alaska, the Lower 48 and Canada for a new documentary film on preservation of tribal knowledge and the relevance of traditional prophesy stories to today’s world. She is passionate about capturing and sharing the knowledge of tribal elders before it is lost.
Nicholas Galanin
Sitka
Multidiscipline
Galanin will purchase and fabricate the equipment and custom tools needed to create a large body of sculptural copper work using traditional Tlingit chasing and repoussé metalworking techniques. This sculptural copper practice is rare today. His work will involve study of historical form and process and training of several apprentices.
Mary Ida Henrikson
Ward Cove
Visual Arts
Henrikson will use the Tongass National Forest for inspiration in creating at least 20 new oil paintings, experimenting with textures and techniques that she has developed over her long career.
Mary Rosanne Katzke
Anchorage
Media Arts
Katzke will engage in a multimedia storytelling project, using environmental portrait photography, videos, social media and live presentations to document and share the grassroots youth movement for system change on critical issues across the United States. She hopes to encourage youth in their efforts to make a difference.
Susan Joy Share
Anchorage
Visual Arts
Share plans a year of exploration in book arts, including creation of a new body of work that explores the intersection of built and natural environments in Alaska, using custom paper, photographic pop-up structures, and dynamic book properties such as hinges and layers. She plans to purchase a camera and gather images in Denali National Park, Kachemak Bay and Anchorage.
Allison Akootchook Warden
Anchorage
New Genre
Warden will travel for research in a collaboration with photographer Brian Adams. The resulting multimedia exhibition will be based on recreated images from the era of Alaska’s early oil. Iñupiat will be photographed wearing clothing from the Middle East. People from that part of the world will wear traditional Iñupiaq regalia and historic dress from the 1970s. She hopes to elevate the Iñupiaq worldview.
Rick Zelinsky
Anchorage
Music Composition
Zelinsky will compose and perform on a new album consisting of jazz, electronic music, and Alaska nature sounds for solo saxophones and rhythm. He will attend a conference in Berlin and collaborate with colleagues in Alaska and abroad. He is excited to incorporate new technology and techniques that will appeal to a broader audience.
Project Awards
Christiane Joy Allison
Wasilla
Literary Arts/Scriptworks
Allison will complete, self-publish and distribute “Timmy and Kate Go to Visit,” the second in a series of picture books for children who are trying to understand what is happening to family members who are incarcerated or involved in the justice system.
Delores Churchill
Ketchikan
Folk & Traditional Arts
Churchill will hire a videographer to film her demonstrating techniques for more than 22 basketry endings, the method of finishing the top. Most are known only by Churchill. The visual instruction will be included on a DVD to accompany Churchill’s book on traditional baskets of Southeast Alaska and stories about their historic uses.
Roblin Gray Davis
Juneau
Performance Art
Davis will create and perform a new solo show in the style of the contemporary theatrical clown, exploring themes around being a lifelong Alaskan. The project will include participation in a professional clown workshop and travel to work with collaborators.
Jacob Dee
Anchorage
Music Composition
Dee will produce and distribute a full-length studio album and go on tour in Washington and Oregon to promote the project. He embraces music as a community and communal exercise to connect otherwise disaffected and disenfranchised people. His approach relies on experimentation and collaboration.
Merry C. Ellefson
Douglas
Literary Arts/Scriptworks
Ellefson will work with collaborators to develop a performance piece inspired by the story of a man lost on an ice floe for 18 days in 1949. She will explore basic questions including themes of friendship, faith and search for home.
David Gerard
Homer
Folk & Traditional Arts
Gerard will purchase new tools and travel to study with a master luthier. He will build a new instrument, either an Irish bouzouki or an octave mandolin, sophisticated instruments with multiple pairs of strings. He also hopes to master the inlaying process.
Ana Gutierrez-Scholl
Anchorage
Folk & Traditional Arts
Gutierrez-Scholl will produce a digital chronicle of the Anchorage-based Mexican folkloric dance troupe Xochiquetzal-Tiqun, of which she is a co-founder. The project will include a printed instruction guide featuring ten of the regional dance forms performed by the troupe that explores the historical and geographical influences on these dances.
Stormy Hamar
Kasaan
Folk & Traditional Arts
Hamar, who grew up on a floathouse in Southeast Alaska, will purchase tools and materials and build a large canoe in the historic Haida style. The project will begin with the purchase of a red cedar log. He hopes to take the finished canoe on paddling journeys.
Abigail Kokai
Homer
Crafts
Kokai plans to document the unique instant community of travelers on the Alaska Marine Highway System through illustrated quilts about individual experiences. She hopes to use photographs of finished quilts to create something new, perhaps a deck of cards or other element of popular culture that reflects current trends of how passengers spend their time.
Paul Andrew Lawrence
Anchorage
Media Arts
Lawrence intends to master the technical challenges of mixing in Dolby 5.1 surround sound. He will purchase equipment and prepare the final sound mix for the feature documentary “The Boneyard.” The film explores a gold miner’s discovery of an extensive cache of bones dating back more than 10,000 years.
Noah Lincoln
Toksook Bay
Media Arts
Lincoln will purchase editing equipment and produce a compilation of short videos exploring emotional situations from his own experience. He expects to examine teen issues, drug and alcohol abuse, and suicide in genres ranging from drama to comedy. He wants to show how traditional culture mixes with technology.
Alison Marks
Juneau
Folk & Traditional Arts
Marks plans to develop her skill in two-dimensional or relief carving, like that traditionally seen on Tlingit house posts, bentwood boxes, carved regalia and household objects. She will carve a bentwood box that would be the first of its kind in Yakutat in more than 100 years to give to Yakutat Tlingit people at a traditional potlatch.
Kim McNett
Homer
Visual Arts
McNett will engage in study and practice to refine her use of color by working in watercolor, colored pencil and other mixed media. She will attend workshops, illustrate a nature journal and produce final works using the themes of wild botanicals, marine life, birds, and coastal landscapes.
Robert Mills
Kake
Folk & Traditional Arts
Mills will travel to study Northwest transformation masks in museum collections in the U.S. and British Columbia. He will create a new transformation mask that builds on the historic form, and make it available for performance with a new song.
Katie O'Loughlin
Anchorage
Choreography
O’Loughlin will travel to Havana, Cuba, to study with DanzAbierta, a professional modern dance company. She will create original choreography based on her training in Cuba to premiere in Anchorage. She will explore how another culture practices dance in a community context.
Lucy Peckham
Anchorage
Presentation & Interpretation
Peckham will study state-of-the-art sound design and mixing technology through travel to professional conferences in New York, Las Vegas and Louisville, and by bringing professional trainers to Anchorage. She will learn to use equipment not currently available in Alaska, and will bring new skills to theaters in the state.
Charlotte Peterson
Fairbanks
Visual Arts
Peterson will purchase a new camera lens and computer and will travel to Santa Fe, New Mexico, for a professional photography workshop. She is looking forward to enhancing her post-processing techniques, and will be adding to her portfolio with the goal of launching a solo exhibition.
Ricky Tagaban
Juneau
Visual Arts
Tagaban will establish a studio outside his home and process mountain goat wool he has been collecting since 2013. He will begin weaving a Chilkat robe to replicate an artifact from his father’s clan. His late teacher Clarissa Rizal underscored the value of returning to local materials.
Colleen Firmin Thomas
Fairbanks
Visual Arts
Thomas works with modern sewing techniques and traditional Gwich’in Athabascan materials and methods in her paintings. She will prepare 20 new paintings for an upcoming solo show in Homer, which will be the first major exhibition of her work outside Fairbanks.
Sydnee Waggoner
Anchorage
Presentation & Interpretation
Waggoner fell in love with opera at the age of 11. She will continue her operatic training and take advantage of performance opportunities in Europe, with a base in Prague. She will focus on learning European style, working on nuance, detail, and perfecting pronunciation in applied settings as she understudies and performs leading roles.
Emily Wall
Douglas
Literary Arts/Scriptworks
Wall will research and write a chapbook of persona poems based on Georgia O’Keefe. The artist describes herself as a storyteller, building poems around her research on the lives, experiences and images of powerful and influential women in our history and culture.
Zak Dylan Wass
Sitka
Music Composition
Wass will purchase new computer equipment that will allow him to produce his first album of original music. He is working toward a compilation inspired by music from around the world, with contributions from an international group of artists. He describes the computer as "the brain and database of my musical life."
Amber R. Webb
Anchorage
Visual Arts
Webb will complete a large qaspeq, a traditional Yup’ik garment, covered with ink portraits of nearly 400 missing or murdered indigenous women and supplementary Yup’ik designs. The project will explore vulnerability, injustice, permanence, violence and healing. The finished piece will be exhibited in Anchorage, Bethel, Dillingham, Fairbanks and Nome.
Sarah Whalen-Lunn
Anchorage
Folk & Traditional Arts
Whalen-Lunn will travel to Unalakleet, Nome, Kotzebue, Point Hope and Utqiaġvik to conduct research on traditional tattoo designs, teach community workshops on cultural tattooing and provide tattoos in traditional styles. Her goal is to bring back an indigenous art form that was almost lost, and to encourage cultural reconnection and pride.
Peter Williams
Sitka
Folk & Traditional Arts
Williams will construct a shed and purchase equipment and supplies that will allow him to process and tan hides from seals and sea otters that he hunts and uses to produce wearable art. The capacity to tan his own hides has cultural and spiritual significance for Williams, and it will improve material quality and production.
Meet the 2018 artists
The Individual Artist Awards Program
These awards provide artists the resources to concentrate and reflect on their work, to immerse themselves in creative endeavors, and to experiment, explore, and develop their artistry more fully. It is our hope that these investments result in substantial contributions to Alaska’s culture, the vibrancy of our communities, and to art itself.
Applications, the Distinguished Artist nomination form, and guidelines are available online or by request. Want to know more about the program and application process? Visit www.rasmuson.org/iaa.
Made by Social Good Studio in Anchorage, Alaska.