John Majak

Born in 1945, John grew up in Dunkirk, New York on the shores of Lake Erie.  He graduated from the NYS Forest Ranger School in 1965 and then attended the College of Forestry at Syracuse University.  He moved to Alaska in 1971 just after completing two years of duty in the US Army Infantry.  He retired from the US Army Corps of Engineers after 30 years of operations on the Chena Lakes Flood Control Project in interior Alaska.

John has been drawing since age five and has studied art at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.  It was there in 1989 that he was introduced to the art of scrimshaw by Professor Larry Vienneau, who was also a Nantucket scrimshander.  
 
John uses an extremely fine line technique in his art and focuses on Alaskan animals and birds for most of his subjects.  Almost all of his scrimshaw is done on fossilized Mammoth ivory.