Inupiaq artist Larry Ahvakana has spent more than four decades building a reputation as a dynamic and profound artist. His unique sculptures, glass panels, masks and other pieces are held in private and public collections around world.

Born in Fairbanks to Inupiaq parents and raised in Barrow and Anchorage, Ahvakana’s father was a whaling captain who helped found the North Slope Borough, while his mother was a store owner and skin sewer. Though Ahvakana now lives in Suquamish, Wash., with wife Donna – also an Alaska Native – he said his art will always be deeply intertwined with the traditions of his Arctic heritage

“I was taught stone carving by an Apache master stone carver – Allan Houser. He taught me the ins and outs of understanding sculpture and understanding your own direction and your own people,” Ahvakana said. “That was the basis for doing my work. To look into my own Inupiaq culture — through my parents and experiences with the village life when I was young in Barrow.”

Ahvakana graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design and later went on to study at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Sante Fe, N.M., and the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City.

Ahvakana said the blending of his experiences of traditional Inupiaq culture with a modern fine arts education gave him and his art its identity.

“It gave me a strong sense of place within the world itself, not just within Suquamish, or Barrow, or Alaska. It’s my culture and my understanding of who my people are and what they’re doing. (That’s) my stronghold. My sense of being.”

His work is displayed in museums, schools and homes in many locations – including the elementary and middle schools in Barrow. Recently, his work was chosen for an exhibition at The Gallery operated by the nonprofit organization Bainbridge Arts and Crafts. Director David Sessions said the organization has shown Ahvakana’s work for years, and views the upcoming exhibition as one of superior quality and importance to the arts and art education community.

“He is a noted Inupiat carver,” Sessions said. “He works in stone, wood, glass and what I am most familiar with are his ceremonial masks. We will have at least 12 ceremonial masks here for the show.”

Other prominent locations showing Ahvakana’s work include the Alaska State Museum, the Burke Museum at the University of Washington, the Portland Art Museum and the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum in Santa Fe, N.M.

Steve Henrikson, the Curator of Collections at the Alaska State Museum, said the Alaska Museum has one of Ahvakana’s early stone sculptures from the 1970s, but hopes to purchase more in recognition of his vital role in Alaska art. “Larry Ahvakana is one of the artists involved with the resurgence of Alaska Native art in the mid-20th century -- drawing inspiration from ancient stories and cultures and making them relevant in the present day,” Henrikson wrote in an email.

Henrikson said Ahvakana’s generation of Alaska artists let go of some aspects of traditional artistic media to bring Alaska Native cultural art into the realm of metal sculpture, glass, painting and other modern approaches.

“My work incorporates many media and materials and a sense of my cultural design,” Ahvakana said. “That’s the key to my work, to create my own style and way of experiencing the visual complexity of our culture.”

Henrikson’s comments echo the sentiment that makes Ahvakana’s work so widely respected.

“He is known for his fine workmanship and sense of design, and although his work shows a modern sensibility, the subject matter is often very close to his traditional roots,” Henrikson wrote.

Aside from the Bainbridge Island show and accompanying talk, Ahvakana is working on a 28-foot-long frieze commissioned for the North Slope Borough library in Barrow. The piece is a seasonal scene, painted on 14 panels of fused glass. Ahvakana said the piece should be up and illuminated in the library by early March.

This story first appeared in The Arctic Sounder and is printed here with the newspaper's permission.