Alaska Native arts market brightens Anchorage winter days

Joaqlin Estus
ICT

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Outdoor temperatures might be in the single digits but Alaskans pride themselves on being undaunted by the weather. They’re turning out by the thousands for Anchorage’s winter festival, Fur Rendezvous.

Starting Feb. 23, people lined the streets for events such as the World Championship Sled Dog races, and a parade. They cheer on unique activities such as outhouse races, snowshoe softball, and Running of the Reindeer.

The Charlotte Jensen Native Arts Market held at Dimond Mall in south Anchorage is popular. Organizers rent tables to Alaska Native residents who are enrolled in a tribe, and sell art they made that is representative of Alaska Native cultures.

Britt' Nee Kivliqtarug Brower, Iñupiat, of Utqiagvik, appreciates the diversity of arts and crafts available at the market. “There's a lot of different areas of expertise, whether it be baleen (a fibrous material gathered from humpback whales) or ivory carving, mask making…bead work. There are other artists that do a lot of jewelry. You'll see a lot of beaded work, regalia, (fur) parkas, you name it,” she said.

Brower describes herself on her website as “a strong proponent of Iñupiat values and their relevance in our modern age.” That includes preservation of the Iñupiat language.

One of her big sellers is a coloring book with the Iñupiat names of mammals. She sells them for $5 each or gives them free to teachers who commit to copying the pages to teach children the Iñupiat words.

She also highlights village life by selling stickers with slang such as: “holy smokes,” “Eeeee,” and “I jokes.”

“There's a lot of humor in our rural communities that we don't see here in Anchorage,...whether we're talking to family or loved ones or it seems like it's a commonality within the rural communities where there's a lot of slang or some funny sayings that you won't hear any other place outside of rural Alaska. So it's nice to bring that to Anchorage and share that amongst the communities,” Brower said.

In addition to sales of stickers and her ivory, shell, and beaded jewelry, another big draw for her is to meet and visit with other artists.

“I feel like it's always nice to be connected with other artists in the community also outside of Anchorage,” she said.

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Moses (Mo) Wassillie, Yup’ik, said he also sees art markets as a way to build connections — between artists and buyers.

“What it does is that it gives people, I call it spiritual pleasure” to have art in their lives. For his part, he said it gives him satisfaction to create something concrete. “Satisfaction or gratification, those terms, but a sense of accomplishment. And it builds your self-esteem every time you create something and you put it out there and then someone buys it,” Wassillie said.

He also appreciates art’s capacity to communicate Yup’ik values such as a deep connection to the natural world, and an ability to innovate and adapt. “I think art itself was always so important in school and in our culture back in those days, because it was something related to subsistence.”

He said when he was growing up in the 1950s, “we didn't have all these fancy things going on. We had to use our minds. That's why I say (art) was a creative solution to complex problems. We had to use our own ingenuity, I guess, rather than to look it up, because nobody, there was no solution that you could look up. You didn't have internet.”

He said he draws on ancient designs, carvings made by ancestors in ivory, for instance, but makes them his own. “Nowadays, because of freedom to express yourself creatively, you can do your own design, you can modify the design that you are given or the principles and the colors and things like that, and make your own statement, make your own art,” which he’s been doing for more than 60 years.

Arthur Kompkoff, Aleut, (shown in top photo) has been making jewelry and knives for a year. Between customers he said, “it's going great. I love it. I'm never bored. There's always something to do and I'm always learning something new, so it's nice.” He said this market is one of the biggest art sales events of the year for Alaska Native artists.

Linda Dotzler, a member of the board for the Charlotte Jensen Native Arts Market said they have about 125 artist vendors this year, who pay up to $200 for tables for five days. “I think that most of them do pretty well. In prior years, we've had many of them sell out before the end of the market, which is on Sundays. So they don't come back on Sunday because they've sold out of all their merchandise.”

The arts market this year is Feb. 29-March 3. The last two days of Fur Rendezvous will feature the start of the Iditarod Sled Dog race, a 1,049 mile race from Anchorage to Nome.

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