Clarissa Rizal

Clarissa Rizal (June 4, 1956 – December 7, 2016) was a Tlingit artist, visionary, and organizer of Filipino descent. She was best known as a Chilkat and Ravenstail weaver, but she also worked in painting, printmaking, carving, and sculpting. In addition to being a visual artist, she was a musician and wordsmith.

Personal life Clarissa Seya Lampe was born on June 4, 1956 in Juneau, Alaska. Rizal's son, Kahlil Hudson, is a film director and associate professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). Rizal died on December 7, 2016 in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. It won a 2007–08 Honoring Alaska's Indigenous Literature Award from the Alaska Native Knowledge Network at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Rizal contributed illustrations to the children's book Mary's Wild Winter Feast (2014). She studied under Harry K. Bremner Sr. for song and dance and Selina Peratrovich for basketing.

Awards and honors Rizal received awards for her artwork. She won a 2013 Artist Fellowship from the Rasmuson Foundation. In 2015, she received a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Artist Fellowship. She was a 2011 and 2016 First Peoples Fund Cultural Capital Fellow. Rizal was a recipient of a 2016 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the U.S. government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. Her mentor Jennie Thlunaut received the same award in 1986.

Other awards include several Native American Art Markets’ Best of Show: the 1992 & 1994 Lawrence Indian Art Show in Lawrence, Kansas, the 1994 Santa Fe Indian Market in Santa Fe, the 2002 Heard Museum Indian Market in Phoenix, and the 2004 and 2006 Sealaska Juried Art Show in Juneau.

One of the last robes on which Rizal worked was a collaborative effort, Weavers Across the Water. At least fifty weavers either submitted squares or helped Rizal in other ways. The squares were woven together into a single robe. It was first worn by master carver Wayne Price at the dedication of a new Huna tribal house in Glacier Bay. Rizal took the robe to Washington, D.C. for the NEA award event.