Florence Nupok Malewotkuk running bear drawing
Florence Nupok Malewotkuk (B 1906 D 1971) running bear drawing. The drawing measures 13.5 by 9.5 inches, frame 21 x 17 inches. Born in the village of Gambell, on Saint Lawrence Island, Florence Nupok Melewotkuk became a painter and illustrator of daily-life scenes that reflected early 20th-century culture of the Siberian Yup'ik Eskimo. She favored a realistic style, somewhat naive, that earned her the title of "Grandma Moses of the Bering Sea." Promoted and marketed by people who believed in the quality of her work, she was inadvertently pioneering and unique in a culture where art was primarily a male pursuit. She began drawing at age eight and used any paper she could find including labels from canned goods. In 1926, she married Chauncy Malewotkuk and a year later began a series of drawings, about ninety in total, for Otto William Geist, who was conducting archaeological excavations on Saint Lawrence Island. This work included figure studies, fur clothing, and women's tattoo markings, and the entire collection is housed in the Archives of the Elmer E. Rasmuson Library at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Photos of these pieces are at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. This Bio of the artist was obtained from AskArt.com
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