Artwork copyright Lawrence Ulaaq Ahvakana. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Seal Dance/Emerging Seal, 1993

Lawrence Ulaaq Ahvakana
American Iñupiat (born 1946)

Location: Beaver Lake Middle School, Issaquah

About the Artwork

Inupiat (Native Alaskan) artist Lawrence Ahvakana carved the sculpture Seal Dance/Emerging Seal from Utah Alabaster, a soft stone that can be finished with smooth and rough areas to create different tones and textures. This piece depicts a traditional Inupiat dancer in the motion of dancing performed at gatherings, Ahvakana notes "the dance is of a hunter's confrontation with a seal, but the seal is really a spirit of the hunter's lost relative."

This artwork was acquired for the State Art Collection in partnership with Issaquah School District.

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.