Erin Ggaadimits Ivalu Gingrich
Erin Ggaadimits Ivalu Gingrich is a Koyukon Athabascan and Inupiaq carver, painter, and bead worker. Her family connections are to the communities of Nome, Nulato, Utqiagvik and Sitka; and she currently lives, works and subsists on the Denaʼina homelands of Anchorage and Cohoe, Alaska.
Her work draws on ancestral beliefs and ways of being that value the natural world and gifts gathered through harvest. Being raised in many wild places in Alaska, Ivalu gained an appreciation for Alaska’s biological diversity, along with experiences of Alaska’s sacred Indigenous lifeways and subsistence practices. Ivalu’s work honor the presence of wild beings in our environment and in our lives through carved, painted and beaded sculptural mask forms.
Ivalu’s work has been supported by The Nia Tero Foundation, Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, The Alaska Arts & Culture Foundation/ Alaska State Council on the Arts and The Rasmuson Foundation. Her work has been collected by The Institute of American Indian Arts, Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico and The Anchorage Museum.