Celeste Worl is a Tlingit multimedia artist, DJ and producer. She has traveled and lived around the globe while sharing her art with collectors and communities. In her art and life, Celeste aspires to build connections between people, cultures and the natural world. A recurring theme of her personal and collaborative projects is the human relationship to bodies of water, specifically oceans. Her paintings merge abstract and ethereal color fields with iconography and traditional art forms from her Tlingit ancestors, often depicting oceanic wildlife, including whales, sharks, otters, seals, and sea birds. Her most recent collaboration pairs the woman-owned surfboard manufacturer, Stoked Surfboards, with her family’s Native-owned apparel and merchandise manufacturer, Trickster Company. The project involves the production of hand crafted surfboards and surf apparel printed with line and form Tlingit tribal designs. All proceeds of sales of these original functional art pieces benefit ocean conservation efforts. Born in 1957 in Southeast Alaska, Celeste is from a world renowned family of Tlingit artists. She grew up surrounded by the creativity and cultural traditions of her relatives, such as totem pole carving, basket weaving, beading, fishing, collecting berries and harvesting clams and gumboots. Her grandmother passed on to her the skills of beading, food gathering, tending the fire for a smokehouse, and identifying the scent of a bear. Her mother impressed upon her many other Tlingit ways and guided her to preserve and share them. Celeste carried on the Worl tradition of cultural conservation, taking her first cultural ambassadorship experience as a docent and educator on Alaska Native art, history and culture at the Alaska State Museum in the 1960’s. However, due to severe cultural erasure efforts in Alaska, accessing the true potency and breadth of Tlingit traditions was not possible at the time she was a docent or prior. In 1971, the Land Claims Settlement Act passed, allotting 1 billion dollars and 44 million acres, tax free for 21 years, to the Alaska Native Peoples for their transition to the western economic system. 12 regional for profit corporations were set up as the infrastructure for this transition, and the Tribal Members became shareholders in them. Tribal Natives became Corporate Natives, and the fabric of community and cultural life was rewoven. The companies mostly focused on the harvesting of natural resources, and processing them into products for global distribution. Celeste studied Environmental Science at Western Washington University to gain understanding of how to support her tribe in this developing economy. In 1980, the Worl family founded the Alaska Native Magazine, an educational, political, informational and artistic medium to support the preservation of traditional ways despite the emergence of a new system. Finding her creative skills called to action, Celeste took on the roles of graphic artist, artistic director and publisher for ANM. She led the publication to success, receiving wide recognition and awards for its advertising and editorial campaigns. The magazine allowed Celeste to discover and develop her talents in visual and artistic communication, and her joy in collaborating with other artists for the shared goal of preserving their culture. Her role at ANW led to many other opportunities for Celeste, including contracts for corporate clients such as Alaska Airlines. She has maintained an esteemed career in publishing, marketing, and design. Outside of her work with the magazine and other marketing projects, Celeste dedicated her time and energy to supporting her tribe’s efforts to create more opportunities for Native youth to learn their traditional ways. Her nieces and nephews, the next generation, were able to grow up with a cohesive education in their own culture and traditions due to this regenerative effort from their elders. Though Celeste finds great pride and joy in the development of intact heritage preservation for the Tlingit youth of today and seeing her younger loved ones benefit from it, there was not such a clear path for her to learn those ways. Craving to more deeply know her ancestors’ traditions, and integrate their stories and values with contemporary views, Celeste enrolled at the Institute of American Indian Arts in their two-dimensional art program. She graduated from IAIA in 2001 with an Associate’s Degree in Fine Art. She has continued creating mixed media art on canvas since then. Ever the explorer, Celeste began branching out into music and other ways of co-creating with her art. From 2010 forward, collaborations with other artists and creators, events, DJ’ing, and producing music became her primary forms of expression. The creative path ahead for Celeste includes making more visual art, producing more music events and fundraisers, mentoring the next generation of Native artists and creators, and expanding the products offered through her Trickster surf collaboration. She invites collaborations with non-profit organizations and projects serving the cause of conservation of oceanic ecosystems, Pacific Island and Coastal Tribes and cultures, and women’s rights. Celeste exudes a spirit of joy, a nurturing presence, and an element of mystery in all that she does. A true healer and teacher, her words and work effortlessly uplift the human spirit, connect us to something greater, and shed beauty on us all.