Ivory & Whalebone Twilth

CAMAI

Hello! My name is Alfred H. Gosuk, but I go by Twilly. I'm an ivory and whalebone carver, specializing in sculptures of alaskan Yu'pik figurines and animals of ocean and land wildlife of our area and the state of alaska. I'm from the village of Togiak, which is located in the southwest of alaska, next to the ocean. Access to Togiak is by plane or boat, and in some cases by snowmobile. I've been carving since 1984, starting out with soapstone for six years, and started ivory afterwards. I've gone on to carving whalebone since then, and fell in love with the porous material of the vertebrae of the whale.

Before I became a carver, I grew up as a fisherman and a reindeer herder. Hardwork as a fisherman and a reindeer herder was not foreign to me. Everybody around me worked hard and nobody complained about the strenuous and long days of summer and winter. Everybody pulled their share of work and they were expected to do their job. My dad herded 700 to 800 head of reindeer and spent most of his adult life managing his herd and did business though he never spoke english. I watched him and learned that one didn't need to know english to run a full-time business. During the summer, I helped with the herd in Hagemeister Island, and managed to fish with my uncle before school. Winter was even harder work, with the below freezing tempatures.

I learned how to carve when I was visiting my brother who was attending school in Seattle,Wa. He was tired of speaking our native tongue of Yu'pik to me, so he went to the seattle indian center and found several alaskan natives and procured their addresses and phones. One of them was a World War II Navy veteran from St. Mary's, alaska. He was a soapstone carver and my brother hired him to give me a carving lesson that lasted 1 1/2 hour. He carved  a walrus laying on it's side using a wood saw, rasp, and file. Wet sanding it in his sink to finish the job.Next, he put it into the oven and heated the stone and took it out. He took it out and melted shoe polish on his carving,and buffed it after spitting on it. He drilled holes on the jaw and put two ivory tusks, detailed it using files, and signed his name on the stone. He went to first avenue and sold the piece to a buyer who's name was Krupp, or something like that. Then, the old guy gave me a piece of soapstone and told me to try it out. I went to the renton highlands library and found books on walruses and went home. I looked at the walruses and using the pictures, made my first sculpture which took me 7 hours to finish. Before I began, I asked God to give me the talent of carving. I gave my first carving to a preacher as my first fruit, a preacher from highlands community church. Since then, I've had rough times as an artist, but I never gave up though struggles were many in the process of becoming an artist

  Today, I live in Togiak with my wife Liz, who is originally from Emmonak, Alaska. Emmonak is located close to the mouth of the mighty Yukon River which has it's beginning in Canada. Roughly about 7 or so miles from the ocean, Emmonak is located by the Yukon River. Liz is formally a Gregory, and she is a descendant of "Sinrock Mary", who was one of the richest woman of her time, with her own reindeer herd. Sinrock Mary was instrumental in having reindeer brought over to Alaska serving as an interpreter for Sheldon Jackson, who started Sheldon Jackson College. She was the only one who could converse with the chukchi natives of Russia, using russian. She couldn't communicate withe chukchi with inupiaq, so she asked if anyone could understand her as she spoke russian. A chukchi answered from the back answering her that he understood her. So, all the reindeer brought to Alaska were a result of "Sinrock Mary's" communicating with the russian chukchi native, and eventually my dad after many years owned a herd thanks to my wife's great,great, grandmother.

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