Cape Dorset, Fine Art from the Far North

There is no word for art. We say it is to transfer something from the real to the unreal. I am an owl, and I am a happy owl. I like to make people happy and everything happy. I am the light of happiness and I am a dancing owl.

                                –Kenojuak Ashevak, Inuit Master Artist & Order of Canada Recipient

One of the consequences that World War II had upon human civilization was hastening the final intrusion of the Modern Western World’s culture to the last unscathed places on Earth. Every community on Earth would be exposed to the good and bad this offered; previously isolated areas were powerfully impacted. Today, of course, we refer to this ongoing transformation with the simple term ‘globalization.’ That concept begins to explain how a remote Inuit village, along an island coast in the Arctic Ocean, has become the most artist-oriented community in Canada.  

Twenty-two percentage of Kinngait residents on Baffin Island are either sculptors, print makers, or two-dimensional artists, which is further surprising considering that 75 years ago, there were none. Even into the early 1950’s, people survived by subsistence hunting, fishing, and gathering as they had for centuries, along with the recent and rather modest arrival of government supplied commodities and materials. That lifestyle was especially impacted in the mid-50’s when the Canadian government and one individual in particular, James Houston, introduced to the Inuit People the notion that this far flung community might want to consider attempting artist endeavors as a means of developing very basic economic opportunities.  

Enchanted Owl, Kenojuak Ashevak, Inuit  (Iconic Image of the First Nations Peoples)

Seven years after accepting the challenge, the West Baffin Island Artist Co-Operative, better known as ‘Cape Dorset,’ was renown throughout the art world, had become the genesis for the town’s economic salvation, and began dispatching community members to never imagined destinations across North America and Europe. Movers and shakers of the Western Art World of the late 50’s deemed the Inuit works the most purely natural art phenomena to have occurred anywhere during the last 100 years. The Primitive and Naïve Art Movements, influenced by Organic Abstraction, were in their heyday, and these Arctic Peoples’ works were truly authentic, reflecting an evolutionary process and deeply authentic artistic creativity. Inuit art stood beyond Western interpretations and definitions of what primitive or surreal art might be.  

The Inuit People of Baffin Island did not study Western art concepts before undertaking their craft.   Their perspectives about ‘how things look’ came from their centuries old understanding about life and living it—being part of the natural order, including a deep connection with the birds and mammals.  The images in their prints demonstrate natural perspectives and intimate visions about the Far North, which environmentally speaking can be described as primitive and barren due to the vast, austere expanses. Additionally, they are a culture that has a well-developed sense of humor, vacillating between ironical and whimsical, and this characteristic is sometimes incorporated into their works.   Their serpentine and soapstone sculptures demonstrate what we think of as having either a Realism approach, especially when depicting the local animals, or a Modernist perspective, usually when they portray a Transformation occurring—one being turning into another—or when making their Goddess of the Sea, Sedna.  

Dancing Bear, by Timothy Pee, Inuit (Serpentine, sold by Spirit Wrestler Gallery)

The original prints began with a large stone, of a type that is fairly easily inscribed upon. The first artist made his or her image by cutting into the smoothed face of the stone. That was the ‘face’ for the ink application and ‘print’ that would be pulled from it.   Once 50 prints were made, as has long been the practice of the Cooperative, then the surface of the stone was scrapped down until it was once again smooth and the next image would be carved into the face.   Stonecut prints originated in Kinnigait Studios.   Through the years, other techniques would be employed for the image design, for the inking process, and other types of paper would be utilized.   But each year, some of the works are still made with the stonecut process.  

 

The Co-Operative’s elected members manage all artworks and the rights to them. Proceeds raised go to Kinngait Studios and the community at large, rather than the artist receiving money, per se. Works are completed at Baffin Island and then flown 1500 miles south to Toronto.   There, they are distributed to galleries and museums world-wide that have applied and been accepted into the Co-Operative.