Carolyn Apangalook

Carolyn Apangalook is a Siberian Yupik from the village of Gambell, Alaska located on St. Lawrence Island. Situated in the icy fog-bound waters of the Bering Sea, St. Lawrence lies 40 miles from the Siberian shores of the Chukotsk Peninsula in Russia and 120 miles from mainland Alaska. The Siberian Yupik people continue to practice a subsistence lifestyle and are recognized for their unsurpassed artistic creativity.

Carolyn carves fossil walrus ivory to create small round faces that she encircles with seal fur obtained through her family’s subsistence lifestyle to create delightfully beautiful pins. She also uses the ivory faces in her fossilized whalebone vertebrae carvings.

Carolyn is married to artist Ronald Apangalook “Qay,” who is a renowned Yupik carver.