Crystal Worl is a Tlingit Athabascan artist who makes art because she wants to remind those who have left home that they come from a special place. Her family and community have guided her to learn, work, and live for her community. Her practice in storytelling and art comes from the values and lessons of the Tlingit people and her family.
Worl is Raven moiety, Sockeye Clan, from the Raven House. She is a child of a Thunderbird and from the Chilkat region in Southeast Alaska. From her mother’s side, she is Deg Hit’an Athabascan from Fairbanks, Alaska. Born in 1988 and raised between Fairbanks and Juneau, Worl was introduced at a young age to traditional arts, practices, and storytelling. In May 2013 she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in studio arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico, from which she also obtained her Associate in Fine Arts degree in moving images.
Worl works in jewelry, metals, printmaking, kiln-cast glass, and painting. The forms on which she focuses are based on traditional Tlingit form and line, also known as Northwest Coast design. She practices the recreation and modernization of her Clan’s crest, the Lukaahadi (Sockeye, Raven Clan). Worl utilizes her education to apply new techniques and ways of presenting traditional designs and stories. Her most recent work explores Tlingit design, intertwined with stylized Athabascan beadwork patterns.
The artist has said that, “It is my responsibility to carry on my ancestral knowledge of creation and life through contemporary story and art and pass it down to the next generations.”
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