ARTShops 2021 Ciivalek Kameksak
Story by Merna Wharton
The ARTShops program is a collaboration between the Alaska State Council on the Arts, the Alaska Arts and Culture Foundation and The CIRI Foundation’s A Journey to What Matters: Increased Alaska Native Arts and Culture grant program. Established in 2016, ARTShops support emerging Alaska Native arts leaders to develop their skills in leading community-based arts programs.
ARTShop has opened new cultural and creative opportunity for all of the participants and myself. This pandemic has put on strain on all of us in many ways. ARTShop brought cultural creativity into our lives and our group accomplished traditional Yup’ik piluguq/kameksak making. We mostly met on Zoom, recorded on Facebook live and met several times with precautions. Making the piluguq as a life skill brought us closer to cultural creativity by a simple act of sharing, and ARTShop gave us that opportunity – Quyana.
