Alvin Eli Amason

Alvin Eli Amason (born 1948) is a Sugpiaq Alaskan painter and sculptor. He was raised in Kodiak and is of Alutiiq ancestry. He received his Master of Fine Arts from Arizona State University and taught for several years at Navajo Community College. For seventeen years, he taught at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and was the head of the Alaska Native Art studies program there. After retiring, he was asked to join the Department of Art at the University of Alaska, Anchorage and develop an Alaska Native Art curriculum.[1]

Amason was raised by his grandfather, a bear guide. He considered other careers, including engineering, before becoming an artist and sculptor. In 1973, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Central Washington University and received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Arizona State University in 1976.

After graduation, he painted and taught art in the American Southwest. He was the chair of Navajo Community College's Art Department from 1976 to 1978. In 1978, he took a position as a lecturer at University of Great Falls in Montana. He received a position at the University of Alaska in 1984, and the Visual Arts Center of Alaska in 1989. In 1992 he took a position as director of the Native Art Center of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, Alaska, from which he retired in 2009. He then joined the Art Department at the University of Alaska Anchorage to develop an Alaska Native Arts curriculum and studio.

Amason has served on the Alaska State Council on the Arts and the boards of the Institute of Alaska Native Arts and the Alaska Native Arts Foundation. In 2018, Amason was recognized with the Governor's Individual Artist Award for Arts and Humanities.[2]

Amason has created paintings and multi-media artworks for Anchorage International Airport and the U.S. Federal Courthouse Building in Anchorage, as well as public schools in Alaska.

Amason's work has been in invitational shows in Alaska, Arizona, Michigan, Montana, Oklahoma, and Washington, DC, and his works are in the Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum in Denmark, the University of Alaska Museum of the North, the Alaska State Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Heard Museum.[3][4][5]