By Tammy Judd

In the early 1970s, Susie Bevins-Ericsen went back to the place of her birth with her mother, who had repurchased the family's house and trading post at Beechey Point in Prudhoe Bay.

Bevins-Ericsen was laying a claim to 160 acres next to the property. The two took a measuring tape and walked and staked the entire 160 acres alone, and they survived by subsistence hunting and fishing.

She recalls the thousands of migrating birds there and a flock of geese that flew overhead darkening the sky. They didn't make a sound but for their wings beating the air, and she was awestruck.

Among birds' singing, bugs' crawling, clouds rolling and 24 hours of sunlight, she rediscovered a love of nature that she'd enjoyed as a child walking the beach in Barrow exploring and treasuring hunting, watching seals and polar bears. She says she was reborn spiritually.

"I'd been gone so long from nature I'd forgotten there's a rhyme and a rhythm to the Earth," Bevins-Ericsen says. "I forgot how things are alive. How nature is alive. I used to know that when I was a kid growing up in Barrow, knowing that there's a power greater than yourself that keeps things intact. That's kind of how I felt when I was little, but I lost that. I got that back while I was up there."

An accomplished artist who has made sculptures now seen daily by thousands, Bevins-Ericsen's life has followed a theme of late discoveries. She didn't embark on the creation of images in wood, metal and paint until she was in her 40s. Part of the explanation comes from her upbringing, she says.

"I never thought in a million years that I'd ever be able to be a professional artist or have a career. I always just thought that my place in life was to have children and learn the things I needed to learn and pass them down to my children and be of some help to other people — the traditional Inupiat women role, how to make parkas, how to butcher meat and fish, and mix seal oil and the traditional way of life even though I lived here," says Bevins-Ericsen, who lives in Anchorage.

Arctic beginning

When Bevins-Ericsen was born in 1941, her parents owned a trading post on the North Slope. Memories of these trading post times are dim for her, since her father died when she was about 1½ years old. When she was 3, her mother remarried and moved the family to Barrow. Her mother and stepfather raised Bevins-Ericsen and her siblings with Inupiaq culture. When Bevins-Ericsen was 11, her parents, Lloyd and Lucy Ahvakana, took the family to Anchorage so her dad could work and the kids could attend school. This was Bevins-Ericsen's first taste of western culture and when she learned to speak English.

Being an artist was the farthest thing from Bevins-Ericsen's mind as a young woman. As she was expected to do, she married and had a couple of children. Since her husband was in the military, she moved around the country. When she divorced her first husband, Bevins-Ericsen returned to Alaska with her son and daughter. She remarried. When her children got older and she had more free time, Bevins-Ericsen started longing to do something more. She began to explore her creativity. She briefly attended college at the Atlanta School of Art in Georgia, then returned to Alaska where she took classes at Anchorage Community College and Visual Arts Center of Alaska. Bevins-Ericsen didn't get a degree, but she did find a mentor in Jim Schoppert, a Tlingit artist who encouraged her to enter the Anchorage Museum's juried show "Earth, Fire and Fiber." She entered two small pieces, a male and a female dancer carved in soapstone, and they were accepted into the show and they sold—something she never expected.

With the encouragement of Schoppert and other artists, including younger brother Larry Ahvakana, Bevins-Ericsen began her career in art in her 40s.

"He (Schoppert) had faith in me. Jim was just a wonderful artist and a wonderful person. He was a very unique, intelligent artist," Bevins says. "He encouraged me, mentored me for awhile, and it was through his encouragement and through friends that I saw that I had something—creative talent—that I ended up deciding that I wanted to pursue art as a career."Inupiaq pride and pains

Bevins-Ericsen identifies mostly with her Inupiaq heritage, although she has some Norwegian ancestry.

"I never knew any of my Caucasian family side. I only know my Inupiaq side. So that's my heritage, my culture. And I'm really proud to be an Inupiat," Bevins-Ericsen says.

Her parents moved back to Barrow in the'70s and still live there. Her mother, now 89, has Alzheimer's and her father is physically healthy but his eyesight is failing. So Bevins-Ericsen and brother Larry Ahvakana take turns caring for them in Barrow.

Ahvakana has had a longer-than-normal stretch caring for their aging parents this time around. Bevins-Ericsen was diagnosed with breast cancer last winter and had a double mastectomy. She is continuing her recovery. More recently she learned she will need surgery to correct a degenerative problem with her lower back. The degeneration has caused the bone to press up against a nerve causing a constant sharp pain in her back.

"But, that's how life is. I'm still high-spirited and I have peace about my future. I believe in my creator that it has all things under control. This life is… it's temporary.

"We all go through things and life isn't easy, but it's really a wonderful gift."

There were times in Bevins-Ericsen's life that she rebelled and hated her life because she didn't know where she belonged, being part white and part Native. She had her share of hurt feelings and bad treatment. She says she found herself through Alcoholics Anonymous, and it has helped her stay sober since 1984.

"Through the program, I've really had a wonderful life. I never would have discovered myself or the talents and abilities that I have if I hadn't gotten sober and learned to examine myself honestly and try to let things go that were bothering me, that hurt me, and how to encourage others rather than being so self-centered.

"So I don't focus on my artwork. I focus on creating work that will bring joy to other people. I love to mentor young people and encourage them. Our young people are so hungry for acceptance and recognition and praise."

Of mentors and opportunities

Most people are lacking in how to mentor young people into adulthood, Bevins-Ericsen says. She speculates that not having the help in finding their purpose or destiny may be why there's so much suicide in the villages.

Bevins-Ericsen has talked to counselors, elders, artists and other creative people about her life-coaching concepts aimed at young people. She acknowledges many such efforts already exist, but they're sporadic. She'd like to see something that would be all-inclusive, clear, concise and purposeful way of mentoring, detecting gifts and talents and involving a creative, artistic or business people who are willing to develop relationships with young people.

"I know that it can be done. I've tried to do it through the arts. I helped start the Alaska Native Arts Foundation for part of that purpose, to make opportunities for artists and for their ability to sell their work outside of Alaska and help develop a Web site. I've been involved in serving on different organizations, boards and commissions, giving workshops and traveling in the villages, doing what I can to help. Because I was so helped by so many different people, before I go to the next life I'd like to be able to see something birthed that would really be implemented to help young people in the villages especially."

She is convinced that there are answers and solutions.

"Everybody's got a little piece of it, but nobody has put it all together," she says.

Bevins-Ericsen says Alice Rogoff Rubenstein, board president of the Alaska Native Arts Foundation, promised she'd try to raise the funds if the artist develops a framework for a mentoring group.

About five years ago Bevins-Ericsen got a call from Willie Hensley, who talked about a friend who came to Alaska for the Iditarod. Rogoff saw Inupiaq art for the first time and fell in love with the Native people. She'd never seen Alaska Native art before and couldn't understand why she'd never seen it in New York, Washington, D.C., or anywhere else in world. She was flabbergasted that Native artwork was not known or recognized.

Hensley told Bevins-Ericsen about her and asked if she had any ideas on what Rogoff might be able to do to help make opportunities for these artists.

"I said, yes, I certainly do. I've been praying for somebody like this woman to come along. An entrepreneurial-type person who has connections in the political and with people that have resources, that are interested in art, that thinks that our work is wonderful, and that we're a wonderful people worthy of attention and recognition."

Hensley set up an appointment. Bevins-Ericsen told Rogoff about the work she'd done on boards, commissions, how long she'd been an artist and some of the needs of the people and why things haven't gone as well as they could. She says she thought they needed to be able to expose their work and educate people outside of Alaska about their cultures and creativity.

"She just got so excited. I called a couple artist friends and we had another meeting and we decided to start this nonprofit organization, Alaska Native Arts Foundation, to promote Native art and to support Native artists and make opportunities for them. This woman is a very brilliant person and she's got a place here now in Alaska and she just loves people, she loves Native people and she loves Native art and we never would have gone this far without her help.

"She's just a godsend. I can't say enough wonderful about Alice and I've told her ‘You're an answer to my prayers, Alice.' And she just laughs at me."

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Tammy Judd can be reached or by phone 907-348-2438 or 800-770-9830.

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