Anchorage Daily News

NEW YORK -- Alaska House, an art gallery and cultural center dedicated to Alaska Natives, opened Monday night in New York City's trendy SoHo neighborhood.

A chic crowd of about 300 crowded the gallery's 3,000 square feet to the jostling point. Crisp white walls and concrete floors provided a modern background to the masks and carvings on display. An enormous moose hide was draped over a shiny steel banister. Huge images of snowmachiners and polar bears were projected onto a screen above the stairs. Baleen stood in the corners.

On the cobblestone street outside the gallery, yellow taxis sped past a slowly melting ice sculpture of a mother bear based on the work of Sylvester Ayek. From King Island in the Bering Strait, Ayek was one of six Alaska Native artists at the opening, along with U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Alaska House founder Alice Rogoff Rubenstein.

"Alice is the lady that made this happen," said Perry Eaton, an Alutiiq artist from Kodiak. "This much contemporary Native art has never been shown in Anchorage in one place."

The art was the focus at the opening, but Alaska House's broader mission is to make sure the Lower 48 is paying attention to the problems facing Alaska Natives. The reception's theme, "Life Without Ice," is meant to draw notice to the changes a warmer Arctic would force on the region's people.

Ayek has already suffered from changes he attributes to global warming. He lives in Nome but makes frequent trips to King Island to hunt and gather food.

"The walrus herds follow the ice pack," Ayek said. "By the time we got to the island this year, the ice was all gone."

Missing out on 2,000 pounds of meat is bad enough, Ayek said, but no walrus also means no ivory, which is a problem for traditional carvers who make pieces for the tourist trade.

"My work doesn't depend on walrus ivory anymore," Ayek said. "But the villagers that still carve ivory are very hard-pressed to buy it when the season is bad."

The Alaska House also co-sponsored a roundtable on climate change in the Arctic, which took place Monday afternoon at the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York foreign policy think tank.

Sen. Murkowski took part. So did CFR fellow and former Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Scott Borgerson, who wrote recently in Foreign Affairs that "in Alaska and western Canada, average winter temperatures have increased by as much as 7 degrees in the past 60 years."

"Our goals for Alaska House are several-fold," said Rogoff Rubenstein, former chief financial officer of U.S. News & World Report and wife of The Carlyle Group's co-founder David Rubenstein. "One, to increase the sales and sale value of Alaska Native art, to both get the artist the fair market value they deserve, but also the recognition they deserve."

"The point we want to get across to Alaskans is that this is a place they can use," said Alaska House executive director Tracey Foster.

The center could do everything from helping Alaska seafood companies with their East Coast marketing to giving Alaska tourists a place to check their e-mail, she said.

"We want to support industry as well as arts and culture."

Alaska House was blessed by Poldine Carlo, an 87-year-old Koyukon artist from the village of Nulato who now lives in Fairbanks. Carlo, who spoke in Koyukon Athabascan for the blessing, had six pieces at the opening, including a beaded moose-hide vest.

About 200 pieces were shown Monday night, representing some 100 Native artists. One piece marked "sold" with a red dot was "Walrus Haul Out," a whalebone sculpture carved by Siberian Yupik Stan Tocktoo that went for $4,100.

"Bird Women," carved by Aleut John Hoover from old-growth cedar, was priced at $61,000, while "Pink Pore," a painting that used walrus stomach on the canvas by Inupiaq and Athabascan artist Sonya Kelliher-Combs, was $1,200.

Alaska House partnered with the Alaska Native Arts Foundation for the opening, with the foundation providing about 80 percent of the art shown. Rogoff Rubenstein is a co-founder of the foundation.

Murkowski said: "I felt such pride in our Alaska Natives. To see Native art like this displayed in New York City ... people were looking at this stuff with such awe."

"As my boss is always saying, people don't know much about Alaska, but they like what they know," said Arne Fuglvog, an aide to the senator and a commercial fisherman from Petersburg. "Our mission in D.C. is to educate people about Alaska, and this helps."

A toddler wearing a blue kuspuk sat in a stroller happily crunching on Goldfish crackers while waiters in crisp white jackets poured beer from Alaskan Brewing Co.

One waiter, Chris Hernandez, grew up in Anchorage before moving to New York City. He said he was surprised when he was assigned to work the opening of Alaska House. Hernandez, 22, said he recognized some of the art from the Anchorage Museum.

"Most New Yorkers I know think we live in igloos with dogsleds," and Alaska House will help to change that, said Hernandez, who graduated from East High and played linebacker at Texas A&M before moving to New York City to chase work as a model and actor.

It was a hot city night when the reception began at 6 p.m. -- 80 degrees, humid, and not much cooler by the end.

"My comfort zone in Alaska is 50 degrees. This is a little much for me," said Ayek, sipping cold Pellegrino from a wineglass. "I love going out sealing and ice fishing in 20 degrees below zero."

Josh Saul graduated from Service High School in Anchorage and is now a freelance writer in New York City.

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