Artist Audrey Armstrong was born in Galena, Alaska to the late Bertha Captain and Chris Nollner.  At the young age of 6 Audrey and her siblings were sent to an orphanage in Fairbanks after her mother’s death. Audrey was lost outside her village in the Fairbanks orphanage; she was overwhelmed in the city and hated the smells of car fumes.

Fortunately, Harry and Rose Ambrose of Nulato and Huslia adopted four children from the orphanage including Audrey and her three biological siblings. Audrey has another brother adopted from another family. Audrey was raised in a traditional Koyukon Athabascan life style in Nulato.  Upon moving to Nulato, Audrey and her siblings were taken out of school for a year to live in the Kaiyuh Mountains across from the village.  That year the Ambrose taught their children the importance of working hard together and sharing.  This was cherished time and Audrey learned how to live off the land like her Athabascan ancestors.
 
Audrey was a tom boy growing up.  She started drawing in grade school and early on won a number of awards for her animal and scenic drawing  She loved hunting, trapping, dog Mushing and fishing with her Dad and brothers and wasn’t interested in learning sewing from her Mother.  Fish camp was a highlight to her each summer while growing up.  Every part of the fish was used and everyone always had something to do.  They worked hard and pulled together as a family.  

At 28 Audrey apprenticed with Elder Charlotte Douthit to learn skin sewing and beadwork.  Charlotte is a Gwich’in Athabascan artist who lives in North Pole.  It was in 2002, while fishing with Scott on Jim Creek, she held a late run silver salmon she caught up into the sunlight and was inspired to make something from the beautifully colorful skin of the fish.  Eventually after teaching herself to sew the fish skins she made her first cup.  

She took artist Fran Reed’s last class on fish skin and gained insight about how important it was to pass along her Koyukon ancestral art form of sewing fish skins.  Fran was taught traditional fish skin sewing from a Venetie elder and studying ethnology collections around the country.  It was in their final class together on a beach near Homer in summer 2008 that Fran encouraged Audrey to pass along her art form to others.  The experience of sewing fish bags on the beach proved to be uplifting spiritually.  They camped on the beach for three days in tents (it reminded her of camping as a kid in the village) sewing fish bags.  Fran passed away and Audrey gave a presentation on  gut research on her behalf in Hawaii later that year.  

Audrey Armstrong’s baskets are in the collections of the Alaska Federation of Natives, Cook Inlet Regional Incorporated, Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, Alaska Native Medical Center, the Alaska Native Arts Foundation, and private collections around the nation.   She was awarded an Individual Artist award in 2008 from the Rasmuson Foundation.  The added resources helped Audrey create enough art to have a solo show at the Alaska Native Arts Foundation.  She will be teaching a fish skin sewing class in Kasitna Bay in July, a class in Mendocino, California in October and has been invited to New Zealand in January 2010 for a presentation.  Her baskets are her own expression of the endangered art form that began long ago in her ancestral land on the Yukon River.   Her children Patrick Junior and Alicia are her life.