At the Vashon Forest Stewards lumber yard last Friday, a group of second graders crowded around two 11-foot totem poles in the making. Shuffling their feet in wood chips and occasionally touching the colorfully painted poles, the Chautauqua students peppered the totems’ creator, acclaimed Native artist Odin Lonning, with questions.

Most of their queries had easy answers. “Do you ever get splinters?” “How do you make the eyes?”

Others, however, were more perceptive. “What are the stories that they tell?” “Do you do it the way that the Indians did it?”

Later, Lonning, who is 61, said with a laugh that he enjoys talking about his work with young children. Kids aren’t afraid to ask questions that adults shy away from, he said, and they can be surprisingly insightful.

For instance, during a recent First Friday when Lonning had his totem poles on display, a 10-year-old quickly caught on to his description of Native American culture as a “living culture.”

“A lot of people think in terms of Native culture as they used to do this, they used to do that,” Lonning said. “But they’re still doing it.”

Lonning, an Alaska Native who has lived on Vashon since 1999, is one of a contingent of Native people who are still “doing it.” The award-winning artist has spent decades creating a variety of Native artwork, hoping to help sustain traditions and raise awareness about the tribes of Alaska, Canada and the Pacific Northwest.

“That’s why I’m proud to do this,” he told the second graders last week. “To keep the traditions alive, which they are.”

The poles Lonning is currently creating mark not only his seventh and eighth totems, but one of his most interesting projects to date.

This summer, the poles will be installed at a historical hotel in downtown Seattle. Just a block away from Pike Place Market, the hotel was constructed in 1908 but purchased in 1962 by the Archdiocese of Seattle, which renovated it for low-income housing. A few years ago, a new parish, Christ Our Hope Catholic Church, began meeting on the ground floor of the building, and recently the church decided to renovate the building’s neglected totem room, a large meeting room that once held an elaborately decorated fireplace flanked by two large totem poles.

While the fireplace has long been destroyed, the church does have photos of it. The original terra cotta totem poles, as was the practice decades ago, carried designs that would mean little to local Native people because they were either from another region or were simply made up by the artist.

“We think they were done in studios back East,” said Pete Mills, the parish’s volunteer coordinator for the renovation.

With encouragement from Lonning, the church decided to create something more meaningful than the original poles. Working together, they drew up designs for two red cedar totems that hold both Native and Catholic figures, including Chief Sealth and Father Prefontaine, who built Seattle’s first Catholic church. The wolf, salmon and killer whales in the design are important in Native culture, while the grapes and wheat have meaning in the Catholic church.

Mills said that while the church’s history in Seattle isn’t all good, the parish wanted to honor both the Native culture of the area and the strong historical ties between the Native and Catholic people in Seattle. He noted that Native people currently attend the downtown church.

“When the poles go up, they’ll speak to each other back and forth with different figures from the Native community and Catholic history,” he said. “Odin was able to draw that out from us and help us tell that story.”

Lonning, whose mother is Tlingit and father is Norwegian, was first drawn to Native art and culture at 10 years old when he saw a Native dance performance. Growing up in Juneau, he learned Native dance, but he also learned he had a knack for copying and sketching the Native designs unique to the area. He eventually taught himself to carve using traditional tools, largely by studying and imitating the Native art of Southeast Alaska and beyond.

“I basically taught myself design work, flat carving, by observing the works of other artists,” he said.

He also made a point of learning the traditions and symbolism behind what he studied, including what each figure or animal stands for and how Native art can tell stories or represent certain families. Unlike some other artists, he said, he didn’t rush to sell his work but waited till he felt he had perfected each type of art, be it jewelry making or totem carving.

Eventually moving to Washington, Lonning studied Coast Salish art unique to the Northwest tribes. During the 1980s, he also took a few classes at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.

“I’ve always been a student of any tribal culture, any art form,” he said. “Learning artwork correctly is respecting your ancestors.”

Now, Lonning can easily explain how art varies by tribe and region and is known for being able to work in different styles. For instance, Southeast Alaskan designs often include intricate details that stem from when clans created beautiful and elaborate gifts for their potlatch celebrations. But in Washington, he said, designs are more basic.

“By comparison, it’s simple but still elegant,” he said.

Lonning is also known for creating a wide variety art, from carved pieces such as wall panels, masks and boxes to jewelry and traditional Native regalia. Joking that he’s been called prolific, he flipped last week through an album containing hundreds of photos of pieces he has sold at shops or galleries or made on commission. His more traditional art features just two or three colors, while modern works might include purple or an image such as a hummingbird. One buyer from the East Coast requested that leaves be incorporated into a carved panel she commissioned.

“I’m very flexible,” Lonning said.

Lonning’s larger installations — totem poles and house posts — can be found in Seattle, Portland, Chicago and Paris. A 10-foot totem he created in 2005 was installed at Everett Community College, and a large carved panel featuring the killer whale has been on display at the Seattle Aquarium since 2007.

While Native art has some presence in the Seattle area, Lonning said he often hears from people who notice there is much more Native art in public places and galleries in Alaska, Canada and the Southwest. For a variety of reasons, Native culture is much quieter in Washington, Lonning said, noting that an annual pow wow once held in Seattle didn’t happen last year, and there’s little to no Native representation at popular events such as the Torchlight Parade.

“I’m tired of Native people being invisible,” he said.

While public installations of Native art help, Lonning said he also places great importance on education and takes any chance he gets to do cultural and environmental education. He and his wife Anne “Orca Annie” Stateler run the nonprofit Vashon Hydrophone Project, through which they do educational outreach in addition to collecting data on Puget Sound’s resident orcas and performing marine mammal rescue on Vashon.

But lately, Lonning said, he has felt a growing obligation to pass on his own carving skills and knowledge to Native people in Seattle. He plans to begin teaching Native art and culture classes at Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center in Seattle, a next phase of his career that he hopes will result in more Native artists.

“If you have a skill or knowledge, you should pass it on,” he said. “No one else has really stepped up to do it. … That’s why I’m going to hopefully be that connection.”