The Foundation’s 2023 Individual Artist Award recipients gather in 2023 for a celebration at Williwaw Social. (Photo by Matt Waliszek)
For creative Alaskans, the Foundation’s Individual Artist Awards support reflection, immersion or experimentation. In 2022, a special award was given to Duke Russell.
Duke Russell sees a better way
This short documentary on Duke Russell is featured in the 2023 Anchorage International Film Festival. The film is by Pat Race.
Duke Russell is a self-taught, lifelong Alaska artist whose iconic illustrations and paintings offer a visual running commentary on Alaska life — and how it could be better. He imagines a city of bicycles, not cars; a playground with a reading room; an elevated place in the world for his beloved Spenard neighborhood.
The summer of 2022, something turned inside him. When hundreds of unsheltered individuals ended up at Anchorage’s Centennial Park, he began cooking and delivering home-cooked meals on his mobile scooter kitchen. He listened to their stories and realized how food, as he puts it, is a “conduit for change.”
His art and his acts of service came together in 2022 when he was recognized with a special $7,500 award.
