ROBERT DIRKS JR.

“I am working with good ivory right now, a lot of times I work with scrap. I have been carving on and off since my middle school bilingual class. Our teacher taught us. He gave us the product and tools to work with and when I graduated, I got my own tools and product. When I was growing up, I used to toy around with Legos. I used to have a bunch of Legos, you could lay in my big box of Legos. I would make all kinds of stuff, I guess arts and crafts is my favorite.

I am working on a pair of spiral earrings, they will have a baleen piece on the bottom and four ivory inlays. I normally get my ivory along the beach, I go beach combing. On windy days during the summer time, the waves will bring up lots of stuff and you might be able to catch it before it goes back out. Right now I am working with fresh ivory from a caught walrus, not a salvage walrus. You have to make sure it’s nice and dry when you work with it. A good place to do that is a cold dark area, I burry it under the house in the summer time and the sand will soak up the moisture.” — Robert Dirks Jr. is Inupiaq and lives in Point Hope, Alaska.