This Walluk biography was taken from “Alaskan Ten-Footed Bear and Other Legends. Compiled by Ruth McCorkle and illustrated by Wilbur Walluk, published by Robert D. Seal, 809-D Terminal Sales Building, Seattle 1, Wash, Main 2-23860, Mutual 2-0018”

“The Artist – Wilbur Walluk”

“Wilbur Walluk was born in a sod igloo like the ones he draws, in the village of Shishmaref, thirty miles by dogsled from Nome, Alaska. When he was small, he helped his father trap polar bear cubs, by traditional Eskimo methods…for zoos in the United States

While snow was plentiful, paper was scarce, and Wilbur used every scrap he could find as a child, including the labels from milk cans, on which to sketch and draw.

Wanting to be an artist, he studied under his school teacher, Mrs. Lillian Russell, and later he studied in Mount Edgecumbe School Alaska, under George Federoff. He shares credit and praise for his work with these teachers and the schools that made training possible for a little bright-eyed, fur parka clad Eskimo.

After carving ivory, drawing and designing jewelry and curios in Nome, he came to Seattle in 1955, where he has married and has a baby daughter. Although civilization has nearly turned him into an Ivy-leaguer, he continues to draw the people and animals and country he knew as a child, and to share with the curious the intense joys, fear and courage of the people who live on the white edge of the world.”

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