News Room: Announcements

Sinew Workshop & Lecture with Artist Coral Chernoff

Saturday, April 15, 2023
Lecture with the artist 11 am
Sinew workshop 12 pm

Artist Coral Chernoff Juneau – Kodiak artist Coral Chernoff (Alutiiq, Northern Cheyenne, Assiniboine) will visit the Alaska State Museum on Saturday, April 15 to talk about her career harvesting, processing, and creating art from natural and handmade materials. Chernoff works in many mediums, including ivory and wood carving, basket weaving, birch bark basketry, and fish skin and gut sewing. The lecture starts at 11 am in the lecture hall.

Following the lecture, learn how to make thread and cordage from animal sinew in a free workshop. Materials will be provided, but participants are welcome to bring their own sinew to get processing advice. Chernoff will also bring processed samples of other natural materials from her vast materials library. This workshop is best suited for adults and runs 12-4 pm, Saturday, April 15. Advance registration not required.

The lecture and workshop are part of a program series accompanying Visceral: Verity, Legacy, Identity - Alaska Native Gut Knowledge and Perseverance.

Visceral: Verity, Legacy, Identity is a group of three interrelated exhibits co-curated by artist Sonya Kelliher-Combs that explore contemporary and historical Alaska Native issues, spotlighting gut as a conduit for Indigenous voices.

Visceral: Verity, a new exhibition of work by contemporary artist Sonya Kelliher-Combs, opened March 3. Her mixed-media installations combine natural and synthetic materials and evoke questions of authentic experience, truth, abuse, transparency, and credibility. Kelliher-Combs is one of only a few artists working with marine mammal gut.

Visceral: Legacy opens the first Friday in May and expands Kelliher-Combs’s solo exhibition themes through a selection of objects from the museum’s permanent collection.  

Visceral: Identity also opens the first Friday in May and features gut parkas from across Alaska to highlight technical and historical aspects of this remarkable material in cross-cultural perspective.

The Visceral trilogy of exhibitions will be on display throughout the summer 2023 season and will include other special workshops and lectures.

Coral Chernoff will have a bag made from sea lion heart sac and fish skin in the exhibit opening on May 5.

Visceral: Verity, Legacy, Identity
Alaska Native Gut Knowledge and Perseverance

visceral

1. felt in or as if in the internal organs of the body
2. characterized by or proceeding from instinct rather than intellect
3. characterized by or dealing with coarse or base emotions

verity

1. the quality or state of being true or real
2. something (such as a statement) that is true
3. the quality or state of being truthful or honest

legacy

1. a gift by will especially of money or personal property
2. something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past

identity

1. the condition of being oneself or itself, and not another
2. condition or character as to whom a person or what a thing is: the qualities, beliefs, etc.
3. the state or fact of remaining the same one or ones, as under varying aspects or conditions

The Alaska State Museum hosts a spectacular permanent collection as well as temporary exhibitions. For museum hours, rates, and more information, visit museums.alaska.gov. The museum phone number is (907) 465-2901.

A person experiencing a disability who needs accommodation for events hosted by the Alaska State Library, Archives, and Museum can contact the division’s ADA coordinator at (907) 465-2912. Please contact us a week in advance so we can make any necessary arrangements.

For more information:

Amy Phillips-Chan, PhD
Director, Alaska Division of Libraries, Archives and Museums
907.465.8718
amy.chan@alaska.gov
lam.alaska.gov