Peter Lind, Jr

Medium: Bentwood Visors, Carving in Wood and Ivory

Peter Andrew Lind, Jr. was born in Dillingham in 1964 and raised in the Bristol Bay area. He comes from a long-standing fishing family – his father with a drift permit for the Bristol Bay and sisters with set net sites. He started doing artwork in the late 1980’s when fishing was bad.

The year that Bristol Bay went on strike, he had to find alternate work. Peter had grown up in a small village and would spend his time building models and working with his hands. As he got older he would watch his father carve beautiful pieces of artwork and he knew he could use his model-building talent to carve. He wanted to work with traditional items in a more modern way. He started with small items such as pins and earrings with beadwork around them that his wife Susan did, then slowly worked his way up to the beautiful art that he creates now. Peter makes a variety of items such as shadow boxes with miniature replicas of Aleut Hunting gear; he has sets of these in hotel lobbies and offices around the state. He also makes bentwood visors from steamed Sitka Spruce, and Atlatls (throwing darts) made in the traditional ways. Some of the new pieces he does are Spirit Hunters, the center is a hunting visor and it is circled with the gear and animals hunted. He is now doing traditional grease dishes, which are carved bowls used to hold seal oil in which food was dipped.

He started with simple bazaars and native craft shows. Once he was a little more known, he then started donating to charities and auctions. In 1991 he did his first donation with the Alaska Native Heritage Park Art Auction. In 1996 he started selling in the Aurora catalog, an Alaskan catalog. In the May/June 2001 issue of Alaska magazine, Peter was interviewed by Dana Stabenow. He does a variety of Native art shows throughout the year such as AFN and Fur Rondy. During the 2000 Fur Rondy Peter was interviewed for Heartbeat Alaska. His website, Bits of Alaska, was featured in a First Alaskans magazine in 2001. During the 2003 Fur Rondy, Peter’s Aleut Hunter carving took both division and first place in the juried competition. Starting in 2004 he started doing presentations in local schools to give the children a look at how native hunters lived and hunted. In 2005 he was one of the artists in a First Friday gallery opening for the Alaska Native Heritage Center. In 2007 he was awarded a grant from the Alaska Native Arts Foundation.

Peter hopes to use his artwork to educate and preserve Native culture for the younger generations.