The Re-collected Images of Joseph Senungetuk
For more than four decades, this elder artist and author has crafted bold and evocative images that capture the ways of life and critical issues facing Iñupiat throughout Alaska. In this interview, the printmaker reflects on his extensive career by revisiting his early foray into woodblock printing and his current project to reclaim them.
Joseph Inusunŋaaq Senungetuk, also known as Joe, is a renowned author and multimedia artist. Senungetuk’s works, including prints, sculpture and jewellery, chronicle his life and personal experiences, often reflecting his dreams and his views of Native lifeways with the inclusion of text drawn from the headlines of the bi-weekly newspaper Tundra Times (1962–97) concerning whaling across the circumpolar Arctic. The artist’s roots are evident in the thematic elements in his work. Senungetuk often states that he creates for his people—they are his audience and the perspective he wishes to reflect—and has spent his career making with sovereignty at the fore. Taken together, his numerous and complex prints provide a catalogue of Iñupiaq philosophy and ways of being.
Born in Wales, Alaska, in 1940, Senungetuk and his family moved to Nome, Alaska, when he was ten years old. Growing up in the community was challenging for Senungetuk and his family. In Wales, they lived off the land—whaling and hunting—speaking their own language and nurturing the close ties with neighbouring families through dance, ceremony and spiritual practice. The decision to leave Wales was largely based on the fact that Senungetuk’s parents would inevitably be separated from their children once the Bureau of Indian Affairs took them to school. When Senungetuk started school, he struggled with the English language and the structure of Western education. He saw an inequitable divide between the Iñupiaq and White students, which left him questioning his ability to succeed within these institutions as an Iñupiaq. As the years passed, Senungetuk started gaining notoriety for his artistic skills, and, in his late teens, he was considered the “town artist.” His teachers would ask him to draw portraits of the American presidents, and local business owners would task him with painting their signs and windows. For Senungetuk this recognition began to shape his unique and autonomous artistic practice, and it would later define his beliefs in the production as well as commodification of his work.
Senungetuk went on to serve in the military and, later, at the recommendation of his brother and noted sculptor Ronald Senungetuk, took a position with the National Park Service in Sitka as an Artist Demonstrator. While working there, the artist would begin creating most of his prints. His images portray the lifeways of the Arctic, spiritual connections with land and marine mammals as well as depictions of current events affecting Iñupiat. He often incorporated written elements in his prints describing the contradictions of the enmeshed and divergent Iñupiaq and Western cultures.
— His images portray the lifeways of the Arctic, spiritual connections with land and marine mammals, as well as depictions of current events affecting Iñupiat.
In 1967 he relocated to San Francisco, California, to further his studies in printmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute. While in San Francisco, Senungetuk began working for the Indian Historian Press in a position he describes as, “a glorified-secretary-bookshelf-builder-and-finally-writer.” There he would take secretarial notes and build office bookshelves, all while working on his memoir Give or Take a Century (1971). Senungetuk recalls being thankful for the typing skills he acquired while in the military. He was able to write as fast as he could think, describing his life in Nome and addressing issues of distortion concerning Iñupiat in mainstream media. His memoir would later pave the way for Indigenous authors across Alaska and define his creative practice in his thorough analysis of Iñupiaq representation. After publishing Give or Take a Century, Senungetuk returned to Alaska and worked for the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Sheldon Jackson Jr. College, where he met his partner Martha Jay Hoover.
Today, the Senungetuks both work as Elder artists-in-residence at Alaska Pacific University (APU) in Anchorage. Their studio is a devoted community workspace for all Indigenous artists that provides instruction and support for those entering the university system— some for the first time. As an Elder in the community, Senungetuk serves as mentor to many, and his work represents a continuum of self-determined Iñupiaq art. He is currently occupied with collecting back his own work; both as protest to artistic commodification and as an act of remembering the significant moments of his life embedded in each piece. As a whole, his collection of works represents an Iñupiaq life, deeply rooted in a belief system of autonomy and intention. I sat down with Senungetuk in his APU studio to learn more about his over 40-year practice and the personal histories captured in his images.
MELISSA SHAGINOFF: The first question I have is about your printmaking work. Can you talk a little bit about why you chose that medium?
JOSEPH SENUNGETUK: Well, when I was working as an Artist Demonstrator in Sitka, Alaska, they had us working in the National Parks building. It had a big window and we were supposed to sit in front and make art for the tourists coming through. I’ve always been private. I don’t think people should share everything about [themselves], and I was just paralyzed in front of that window. The first two weeks, I couldn’t make anything. I was so frustrated [that] I banged my fist on the table and my ink splattered up and down onto my drawing pad. I looked at the dots and start drawing from them. I made little animals around each dot and then humans. Those became my drawings for my first woodblock prints. And for a while after that, it was how I started all my woodblock prints, with splatter.
MS: What a great story, and you remember it so vividly. Many of your woodblock prints include text, such as Yesteryear’s Seasons (1973). As a writer, I imagine that is quite important for the messaging of your work. Can you talk about some of the text you include and why?
JS: Well, I used a lot of headlines from the Tundra Times, Howard Rock’s Inuit newspaper. I liked to use headlines about whaling and politicians—things that affected Iñupiaq lives. I also liked that it was writing from Native people for Native people.
MS: A lot of dialogue regarding your work is about how it resonates with Iñupiat. Is that something you have done deliberately? Do you create specifically for an Indigenous audience? What aspects of your life and history do you draw upon?
JS: Not intentionally, but I guess that is what I do. And that is what I have been doing, both in writing and making artwork. It’s all one life.
In studying art, I know that there are different forms of art in different historical times. I’ve tried to apply that idea to Iñupiaq art, and I marvel at all the times that I’ve looked at photographs of old museum pieces. They didn’t have electricity [but] they had their own type of drills and their own knives and chisels, and yet, they were able to make jade carvings, which is next to a diamond as far as hardness goes. So, they would have had to use nature somehow to carve jade. I read somewhere that one of the techniques they used was placing a piece of jade in a small creek or running water, and they tied it up just so that it would rub and rotate next to a hard rock in the river, in the running water. They had the patience to watch nature carving something that they could not do [by hand]. They also made quite a lot of tools for daily living, hunting, fishing and so on.
MS: This ingenuity you are referring to, by Iñupiat in the creation of utilitarian objects, is quite amazing. What parallels do you see with Iñupiaq art today?
JS: The education that they were receiving, which was passed down from year to year, is a period of Iñupiaq art [objects created precontact]. This was similar to the Renaissance period in Europe, except it’s all different [laughs]. If I could go back to the prehistoric period where they were painting like crazy on the cave walls you could say [that this artistic skill in representing their world] surpassed Western art completely, as far as knowing their subject and techniques and how to get those animals for food and material. [Laughs] In the same way that I’ve viewed art forever in its various forms, from prehistory to Picasso. I know that Picasso “borrowed” ideas from African artists in his paintings of African masks, so it wasn’t “his” inspiration. But I do admire his work, simply because he was so prolific. MS: Do you think being prolific is important as an artist?
JS: I don’t know how to be prolific at all, because I don’t value art as a source of money. As it turns out, each person’s artwork is somehow related to his own identity. [Picasso] may borrow from African art, or maybe he borrowed from Inuit art, but I don’t suspect its historic tools related to him.
MS: Can you talk a bit more about your identity? Is investigating that aspect of yourself part of your art practice?
JS: Well, I don’t believe in copying my own ancestors’ artwork, except [if] I make some change to it purposefully or accidentally, or somehow it becomes mine. The integrity of being able to do that [comes] from whatever I’m built of. I know I’m spiritual, because each person has a spirit, and, when we die, some people say it’s gone, but I don’t think so. I think through art [a person’s] spirit can keep living forever.
MS: That is really moving, and I think an important point to be aware of, that borrowing from our ancestors and their ingenuity needs to come from a purposeful place.
JS: Martha thinks that way too [smiles].
MS: Something I’d like to return to is that you said you don’t value art as a source of income. Can you talk about that?
JS: I admit that I have [thought about it], in various times—times when I was very poor. A commission will come in, an idea will come in. But I’ll only do it if it is an idea that comes from a dream or from a mental image that I’ve kept all these years [while] growing up. It has to be part of me.
It has to belong somewhere. Images I [have] collected in my head, my whole life. That’s how I view my life and my art, as belonging to me and coming from somewhere. For me, it comes from mostly a sad story and I could feel sorry for myself in reviewing who I am, but I don’t. I’ve enjoyed life too much to feel sorry for myself.
MS: With these images being so close, so personal, can you explain where collecting the work you have sold comes into your practice. What does the act of reclaiming your work mean to you? Some might say it’s the opposite of being an artist, bringing your work back rather than spreading it out.
JS: There are certain things in a life, in my life, that I consider to be in the sacred realm. My art and creating is spiritual to me. And it’s also a bit of resistance. I guess, I view myself as more of a recorder. In fact, there’s a photograph that I’ve been working from. [He pulls a framed photo from a shelf and shows me the image of a school with Iñupiaq students lined up in front.] It’s called Wales School and is from 1926. It’s before I was a glint in my parents’ eyes. But they lived that. In fact, they might even be pictured in there. [He points at the framed photo.] I think this looks very much like my mom, and this looks very much like my dad. I’m particularly interested in these two. [He points to two blurred figures in the photo.] They are the resisters, they won’t sit still.
MS: What drives you to make art?
JS: I think about what my ancestors did many hundreds of years ago, and I’m hoping that I’m reliving those moments. Even though I cannot really imagine what 10,000 years of developing or undeveloping technologies, or adapting to [Western food sources], or staying with the same [Iñupiaq] food, or even what remaining static looks like over time. I like to think my Iñupiaq ancestors were like, “Whoa! What a genius!” when they saw their ancestors’ art. And then I think about my art, and I look back at the work and realize, I really like my own past artwork. And sometimes it does speak to me, and I go, “Whoa! What genius! How did I think of that?” [Laughs].
This interview has been edited for clarity and condensed.
There are certain things in a life, in my life, that I consider to be in the sacred realm. My art and creating is spiritual to me. And it’s also a bit of resistance. I guess I view myself as more of a recorder.
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