“Inuit can make something out of anything,” marvels John A. Houston in the 1999 tribute film* we’re watching at the Unikkaarvik Visitor Centre. We’re in Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut Territory**, holed up, waiting for a plane to Cape Dorset delayed nine hours by howling 145 km/h (90 mph) sideways blowing snow. Houston’s dad, James Houston, was a white man who lived among the Inuit in this area of the Canadian Arctic in the 40s and 50s; he was essentially the first to promote Inuit art to the world. And his son was right: the “depth of [their] imagination” is astonishing.

Some 50 years later, the West Baffin Eskimo Co-op Ltd. Houston helped establish in Cape Dorset on south Baffin Island is still going. At its heart: stonecut printmaking and lithography. When you see the remoteness, the harshness, the isolation of this far-flung creative outpost of 1,300 mostly Inuit residents, that’s astonishing, too. Today, the half-dozen-plus fulltime artists employed at the assemblage of airy warehouses are dealing with transition.

Many young artists find “graphics”—traditional stonecut printing and lithography—too time-consuming to master, and are instead gravitating toward carving and painting. Studio manager Jimmy Manning supplies free paper and supplies for those who want to experiment. (Up-and-comers are Jutai Toonoo, Suvinai Ashoona, Arnaquq Ashevak, Tim Pitsiulak.) But Manning worries about the co-op’s future—now that Houston’s original stars, for one, Kenojuak Ashevak, famed for her wildly imaginative, colourful prints of humans transforming into animals—are aging. Ashevak, Canada’s most famous Inuk artist, is in her 80s.

But, as Houston notes in the film, “Inuit women have always been masters of graphic design.” Perhaps the next phase will be just as enthralling, but different. Certainly, demand is strong.

Small cargo planes that land about five times a week in Cape Dorset or Kinngait, “the Inuit Art Capital of Canada,” carry only 10 to 20 passengers. The remainder is piled high with cardboard boxes of bubble-wrapped prints, marble and serpentine (soapstone) carvings bound for Toronto, New York, Paris and London, where they’ll sell for perhaps five times the artist’s cut.

When we visit the co-op, Emataluk Saggiak is encasing foot-high owls in bubble wrap at a packing station. Kavavaow Mannomee stands at a table, delicately lifting paper off a stonecut print (cut from pool-table slate or soapstone)—a Kenojuak fish (Arctic char) with brilliant plumes. Qiatsuq Niviasi is quietly rolling orange paint over the antlers of two caribou. Kananginak Pootoogook works with aluminum plates for lithography.

The co-op art division’s shelves are filled with hundreds of greenish-blackish soapstone, bone and antler figures from tall to tiny: owls by Padlaya Qiatsuq, Inuit hunters, seals, fierce polar bears, single-tusked narwhals, a sleek loon by Mikisiti Saila, so fluid it looks liquid. (Prime Minister Jean Chretien famously had a Saila loon.) “I go out in a boat in summer to get the serpentine 100 miles from here in summer,” Qiatsuq says. “We carve marble when the soapstone runs out.”

Palaya Qiatsuq, the co-op’s carving buyer, pays cash for carvings from the Inuit who stop in—their works wrapped in cloth tucked into fur-lined jackets. Or, budding artists like Etidloie Tunillie, son of talented sculptress Ovilu Tunillie, might knock on the doors of visiting guests, offering a small polar bear for $30. It feels cold as an iceberg to the touch.

The print shop closes each summer, when locals go “out on the land” with their extended families camping and hunting. “We like to get work done by the end of May,” says Manning. “Then printers try to get back before the first snowfall, at the end of September.”

The lure of the land is strong. Despite snowmobiles and cable TV, some traditions remain.

“Why is so much art being done here?” asks Kristiina Alariaq, owner of Huit Huit Tours with husband Timmun. “It’s not so much about the money. It’s about spirit.”

*from “Songs in Stone—An Arctic Journey Home,” a 1999 film archived at the Unikkaarvik Visitor Centre in Iqaluit, NU.
**Pronounced NOO-nah-voot.

www.nunavuttourism.com

trivia

• At a 2006 Inuit art auction in Toronto, ON, a 1950s piece by an unknown Kivalliq artist sold for $69,000. At the same sale, a carving by Quebec-based Joe Talirunili went for $278,000—the most ever paid for a single piece of Inuit art (reported by the 2008 Iqaluit Visitors Guide).
• Kenojuak Ashvak’s “Enchanted Owl” was printed on a six-cent Canadian postage stamp in 1970. A copy sold at auction recently for $58,000, reportedly the highest amount ever paid for a Canadian print. Ashevak’s owl and raven have been reproduced on the Canadian quarter.