Artwork copyright Lawrence Ulaaq Ahvakana. Photo courtesy of Washington State Arts Commission, 2017.

Artwork copyright Lawrence Ulaaq Ahvakana. Photo courtesy of Washington State Arts Commission, 2017.

Winter Festival, 1991

Lawrence Ulaaq Ahvakana
American Iñupiat (born 1946)

Location: Tacoma Community College, Tacoma

About the Artwork

Artist Lawrence Ahvakana's painted cedar carving Winter Festival celebrates the history and legends of the artist's Inupiat (Native Alaskan) culture. The imagery depicts many mythical symbols, including wolf-whale figures, the claws of the thunderbird, and the peaks of the brooks mountain range.

This artwork was acquired for the State Art Collection in partnership with Tacoma Community College.

About the Artist

Ahvakana spent his childhood in Barrow, Alaska, part of the Inuit Nation that spans from Siberia in Eastern Russia, to Greenland in Northwestern Europe. He states, "My first introduction to the Arts was watching my mother, who is a very competent skin sewer... The dances and songs of the Inupiaq tradition is the oral history of my people. It is the emotional interpretation of our respect and involvement within the environment of the North Slope of Alaska." Ahvakana earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture and Glass Arts from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 1972. He is a graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Cooper Union School of Art in New York City. He lived in Suquamish, Northwestern Washington, for many years, and is currently based in Alaska.