Mixed media artist Rebecca Lyon has been honored with the Rasmuson Foundation’s Distinguished Artist award, which includes a $50,000 grant celebrating her creative excellence.
Lyon, who was born in Cordova but now lives in Anchorage, is of Dena’ina Athabascan and Unangan heritage. She was inspired by her grandmother, Alice Brown, a Kenaitze Dena’ina champion of civil rights involved in working for passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, as well as her mother, Joan Elva Naines.
Her art incorporates painting, carving, metal work and screen printing, articulating her ideas about Native rights, women’s rights, and the environment.
Pieces of her work are in collections at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, the Pratt Museum in Homer, the coastal port city of Boulogne-sur-Mer in France, as well as Nevada, Massachusetts, New York, and Finland.
Before deciding on a career in art, Lyon was focused on being an electrician and a mother.
In 2016 she won a Rasmuson Foundation Individual Artist Fellowship Award. This year she is also being celebrated by Rasmusen Foundation with a short documentary, “Lyon of the North,” about her life and work.
The Rasmuson Foundation is a private family foundation in Anchorage, created by Swedish missionary Jenny Rasmuson and her son Elmer, to honor her late husband, missionary and banker E.A. Rasmuson.
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