Working the Ocean's White Gold

Fairbanks ivory carver Brian Kulik, an Inupiaq, doing what he loves best. Here, he ﬁ nishes an Eskimo nativity scene. Working the Ocean’s White Gold Carvers turn walrus ivory into art BY MICHAEL ENGELHARD CULPTING WALRUS TUSKS IS AN ACT OF transformation, turning animal into art. It also is revitalization: what is dead once more becomes animated. Lastly, it is the thrill of Sdiscovery. What hides in there? asks the carver, exploring a silky arc with callused hands. Th roughout the Bering Strait region and Arctic coastal Alaska, the earth has yielded walrus ivory artifacts thousands of years old. Th e practice of manufacturing things of transcendent beauty from the sea’s white gold still is vigorous. In Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island (the “Walrus Capital of the World”), nearly every resident has a relative who is an ivory wrought treasure like Aladdin’s cave. Inupiat from Ivory snow carver. Th ey sell their creations to tourists or mainland- King Island, another sea-mammal hunting outpost, goggles from northwest ers living there, to private collectors and galleries, and also market their wares through this store. Alaska circa to gift shops and wholesalers like Maruskiya’s of Nome, Before contact with Europeans, Eskimo people AD 400-600. SAINSBURY AND LISA JAMES AUSTIN/ROBERT (LEFT) BRIAN KULIK COURTESY COURTESY (TOP) UNIVERSITYOF EAST (UK)ANGLIA ARTS, VISUAL CENTRE FOR SAINSBURY COLLECTION, ALASKA MEDIA PUBLIC COURTESY PAGE) (OPPOSITE whose window on Front Street brims with fi nely had little access to metal or wood and therefore 48 ALASKAMAGAZINE.COM OCTOBER 2018 “Singing to the Walrus” is a transformation sculpture by Levi Tetpon from Shaktoolik. cultivated the craft of carving bone, soapstone, and walrus ivory; ancient wealth. Minerals from the embedding soil tinge these more durable than wood, the curved canines were easier to gems creamy-white, bluish, or a deep, chestnut brown. An process than stone. The output included ancestral images, unworked fossil walrus tusk fetches about $500, depending on amulets, and everyday items: needle cases, harpoons, snow size. It is perfect for chiseling: soft enough to be carved with goggles, fishing lures, arrow straighteners, and fancy combs. hand tools yet hard enough to be polished like stone, without Soot or red clay rubbed into patterned grooves looked pretty need of lacquer or any other finish (fresh tusks must be sea- while adding magic and meanings. With the influx of sailors, soned before they are carved or they will crack). traders, miners, and missionaries in the late 19th century, new Walrus are protected under the 1972 Marine Mammal demands broadened Native repertoires: scenes from life, Protection Act, but Alaska Natives who traditionally hunted scrimshawed on entire tusks, ornamented tobacco pipes, letter them can continue to do so and sell byproducts—whiskers, openers, and sundry souvenirs and collectors’ items. Styles also skulls, ivory—that have been modified, upgraded into art. Alaska changed, from semi-abstract representations of humans and Natives and non-Natives may use fossilized walrus (and mam- animals and geometric compositions to large-scale graphics and moth) ivory, though it’s illegal to take fossils from state or federal naturalistic designs: flags, roses, sleds, boats, hunts, and cliché lands. In Nome, out-of-state tourists watching the Iditarod or (and incorrect for this part of the North) igloo encampments— disembarking from cruise ships like to buy locally carved ivories. often copied from illustrations or photos the customer provided. Unfortunately, many don’t understand the difference between Ivory carving morphed from subsistence into a cash enterprise legal walrus and illegal elephant ivory. Alaska galleries complain also in Saint Michael, Teller, and on Nunivak Island. “Hundreds that consequently, sales for some artists have dropped 40% since of Eskimo men turned out thousands of ivory cribbage boards, the ban. The buyers’ uncertainty spells hardship for carvers and gavels, umbrella handles, and figurines for the local stores,” their families as in this cash-poor region art pays for clothing according to the anthropologist Dorothy Jean Ray. and fuel. To make matters worse, works by fictitious “Eskimo” In the 1870s, the Alaska Commercial Company at St. Michael carvers, frequently mass-produced and from elephant tusks, bought walrus tusks and gave or sold them to men for engraving, infiltrate markets. since no walrus lived in the area. Elsewhere, large-scale commer- Today’s carvers have changed with the times. Instead of bow cial exploitation of the animal’s tusks, blubber (for lamp oil), drills and files, many now prefer dental or electric tools, and meat, and skin (for drive belts in industrial machinery) caused Sharpies for tracery, not India ink. Souvenirs can no longer be Arctic populations to plummet from hundreds of thousands to had for tobacco, flour, or nails. Statuettes with inlaid baleen eyes 50,000 by the 1950s. or trim, engraved with lines filled with black pigment, and set on Luckily for the carvers, a second source of raw material lies fossilized ivory bases cost thousands of dollars apiece, as do underfoot: Modern Michelangelos dig fossilized walrus teeth embellished skulls with tusks in place. Regardless of trends, the from the normally frozen ground around prehistoric hunting creative process and artistic sensibilities remain unchanged. The camps during summer’s brief window. They chance upon them carver, observer of physical and spirit realms, makes them beachcombing or hunting, as rivers and wave action uncover tangible for the rest of us with vision and skill. OCTOBER 2018 ALASKA 49.

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