It is my great honor to announce the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian has purchased one of my paintings for their permanent collection. The piece is an oil painting created this year of a young Alutiiq woman with a Kodiak brown bear cub set in the coastal lands of Kodiak. The painting is titled, Taquka’aq, Sovereign of Kodiak Island. This painting represents the kinship and bond between the Sugpiaq/ Alutiiq people and the living creatures among them.