In the North, few industries shine brighter than the arts. From Tlingit masks carved in the Yukon to hip-hop CDs cut in the NWT to children’s books penned in Nunavut, the creative output of Canada’s territories is dazzling. The stats are stunning, too. Of all Canada’s regions, Nunavut has the highest percentage of artists. Indeed, according to a 2006 study, Cape Dorset – the birthplace of contemporary Inuit art – is the nation’s most creative town, with nearly one in four residents making a living off art. In the Yukon, meanwhile, the number of arts-workers has doubled in the past decade, and that territory’s music industry alone has grown to almost $9 million in value annually. In the NWT, some 5,400 artists garner $4 million in yearly sales. On its own, Inuvik’s Great Northern Arts Festival – the biggest such event North of Sixty – brought in more than $130,000 in sales this year. Here, in our regular Focus On feature, we present the faces behind those figures: The musicians, designers, printmakers and other creative types who make the North such a hotbed for art.
One-woman dynamo
Throatsinger. Dancer. Artistic director. Iqaluit’s Sylvia Cloutier has evolved into an artistic jack-of-all-trades. “I wear a lot of hats,” Cloutier says. “I don’t have a full-time government job, so this is what I do.”
What Cloutier does is serve as sort of a one-woman artistic and cultural dynamo in Nunavut’s capital. When Up Here caught up with her in July she was departing for vacation after organizing Iqaluit’s Alianait Arts Festival. Her break was going to be brief. Upon her return, Cloutier would be teaching a summer music camp. Then, in October, she and fellow throatsinger Madeleine Allakariallak would embark on a tour of China with the Toronto orchestra Tafelmusik.
The work with Tafelmusik is just one of Cloutier’s collaborations. She and two other throatsingers from Nunavik also perform regularly with the Belgian rock band Think as One. And she’s working on an album with Clyde River-born, Quebec-based DJ Geronimo Inutiq (a.k.a. DJ Mad Eskimo).
Cloutier’s mission, she says, is to serve as an arts promoter and mentor in Nunavut – particularly to the territory’s young population. “That’s my drive,” she says. “Not all young people are athletic and want to play sports. But everyone has gifts. Hopefully, young people know there are performing arts and it’s an important field. There are career options with it.”
In the movies
Zacharias Kunuk’s work behind the camera always hits close to home, but this past summer it hit closer than ever. Kunuk, the award-winning filmmaker from Igloolik, Nunavut, videotaped the return of his 81-year-old father, Enoki Kunuk, who’d been rescued after going missing for 28 days on the land during a caribou hunting trip. Kunuk says he has no plans to turn the homecoming footage into a film project “I was videotaping this so I would remember,” Kunuk told Canadian Press). But documenting the stories and legends of Inuit people in and around Igloolik is what the 50-year-old Kunuk has been doing since 1983.
Kunuk got his start with the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation interviewing and recording Igloolik elders. By 1985 he had progressed to independent projects like the 28-minute documentary From an Inuit Point of View. Yet it wasn’t until he directed Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) that Kunuk’s name and work became known outside the North. Winning the prestigious Camera D’Or for best first-time feature director at the Cannes Film Festival – plus several other awards for Atanarjuat – will do that for you. “It’s been a big year for me … getting on TV. I never imagined,” Kunuk told Up Here in 2001.
Since those heady days when he put Nunavut and Inuit culture on the cinematic map, Kunuk hasn’t rested on his laurels. His latest feature film, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, was released in 2006 to critical praise and Kunuk is currently working on a documentary, Exile, which tackles the subject of government-imposed High Arctic relocation from an Inuit point of view.
The oracle of Yukon
These days, when Patricia Robertson goes walking on the trails near her Whitehorse house, she looks around and sees the future. Her current project is a fantasy novel for young adults – a time-travel story – and it begins with a boy who lives in the Yukon.
Novels aren’t Robertson’s first love. She’s just released her second collection of short stories and novellas, The Goldfish Dancer, and she maintains short fiction is the perfect balance between poetry and novels. “Every word has to count, and I like that need for economy,” she says. “But at the same time story is vital – it’s not just pretty language.”
An English teacher at Yukon College, Robertson’s not afraid to play with language. She uses no quotation marks in her dialogue – she says William Faulkner did the same – claiming they’re extraneous clutter.
Though living in the North as a writer can mean fewer invitations to readings and networking events, Robertson enjoys it: “There’s an advantage to being at the margins of things. It’s not as competitive, and I don’t get caught up in the literary scene,” she says. “I like the silence here.”
Designing woman
You could say Berna Beaulieu’s passion for clothing started when she was a kid growing up in Behchoko, formerly Rae, NWT. The 56-year-old fashion designer used to pore over her mom’s old Eaton’s catalogues, craving clothing that was anything but her school-issued kilt and smock. Her first attempt at sewing was disastrous. She ransacked her mom’s sewing box and fashioned a pair of blue pants so snug her mom had to peel them off her when she got home. “She was killing herself laughing,” says Beaulieu. “I just wanted to show her what I could do.”
Now, 50 years later, Beaulieu is showing the world what she can do, with her unique designs blending traditional Dene hide- and bead-work with modern styles. Her outfits have been displayed everywhere from the 1998 Arctic Winters Games to a Munich fashion show, and recently, on the catwalk at L’Oreal’s prestigious Fashion Week in Toronto, which showcases designers from across the country. She also received the Governor General’s 50th anniversary Queen’s Jubilee Medal for her contribution to her community through fashion.
Beaulieu lives in Edmonton these days, brushing up on her computer skills and working on a new plan for another business focusing on traditional wedding dresses and designs with a country-and-western flair. “Ideas just come to me and they won’t leave. I have to write it all down,” she says.
Carving out a Future
Calvin Morberg is dedicated to passing on Tlingit carving traditions to future generations. The thing is, at 24 years of age, he’s younger than most of his students.
On a recent summer day in Whitehorse Morberg has just finished a mask made of birch, horsehair and acrylic paint, and he’s off to teach a class of nine at the Sundog Retreat. Even at his young age, he’s gained a reputation for teaching by example. And, though quiet by nature, he’s also known for gracing his students with praise.
Thanks to the Sundog Retreat’s stipend, Morberg has turned pro in the carving world, working 30 hours a week and selling mostly to private collectors. Mythical beings and animals dominate his mask-work, and ivory or wolf fur add alluring textures to striking faces. “Our workspace is something between a studio and a gallery,” he says. “People can come in off the street and watch us work.”
They can also come in and buy. Recently, Morberg fielded a call from Yukon officials who wanted to purchase one of his carvings to give to the Governor General. In typical fashion, he instead urged them to visit the retreat and pick from among his own works as well as those of his fellow carvers. Ultimately, it was another artist’s piece that was selected as the gift – a situation that suits the humble Morberg just fine.
A whole new Look
Jamie Look’s hand-crafted accessories are at once sleekly modern and wildly raw.
Her wearable work – a combo of jewellery and accessory – combines rich animal hides, antlers and even seal fur with slim, silver chains and sparse beading, creating a unique style that’s both urbane and Northern. “The style is feminine, but also hard and edgy,” she says. “I’m using traditional materials in a way that’s never been done before.”
Trained in fashion design at Montreal’s prestigious LaSalle College, Look cut her teeth as head designer for an up-and-coming Montreal designer known for his leather and fur detailing. Afterwards, Look returned to her hometown of Yellowknife and worked and trained under Karen Wright-Fraser, a renowned Gwich’in designer and seamstress.
There, Look learned how to sew hide vests, traditional Métis ribbon shirts, moccasins, and moosehide jackets, and gained a new respect for aboriginal craftwork like beading and quillwork. Inspired by what she’d learned, Look got to work. She wanted her designs to embrace Northern culture without emulating it. Her focus was more on traditional materials than techniques. The result was her first “body adornment” line, which debuted at a runway show – dubbed Mysterium Tremendum – a few years ago in Yellowknife.
Visit her website for more info.
The stonecutter
Through sheer raw talent and a quiet determination, John Sabourin has become of the NWT’s foremost artists, known for his imposing soapstone and chlorite sculptures and stark caribou paintings. Born in Fort Providence and reared in Fort Simpson, Sabourin first considered being an artist after taking carving workshops with a couple of well-known artists -- among them, famed Inuvialuit carver Bill Nasogaluak. It was with Nasogaluak that Sabourin realized two crucial things: that he had an astounding knack for carving, and that people could actually make art for a living. “It came very natural to me,” he says in his downtown Yellowknife apartment. “And meeting other successful artists like Bill affirmed that I too could be a working artist.”
His first soapstone carving was of an eagle, looking stern with its wings closed defiantly by its side. The effort was so good it quickly sold for $1,200 to an aboriginal art show in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Since then, Sabourin’s sculptures have been selling to a wide audience from Germany to Norway and across the U.S. His carvings most often depict animal spirits and transformations, while his acrylic paintings almost exclusively portray caribou, in herds or alone, amid a vast, textured background. He is represented by Arctic Artistry in New York, and Bear Claw in Edmonton. He can be reached at jp_sabourin@hotmail.com.
Wild man
Sonny MacDonald has carved sculptures for Prime Ministers, Governors General, princes, dukes and even the Queen. His handcrafted moose-antler throne propped up the late Pope John Paul II when he visited Fort Simpson, NWT in 1987, and MacDonald’s commissioned sculptures prettify numerous establishments across the western Arctic. But when you visit his modest gallery in Fort Smith or meet the affable, burly artist himself, it’s clear the man just loves to carve. He works in bone, antler, marble, horn, wood (especially after a forest fire), ice and snow, and even mammoth ivory when he gets it.
When he was just seven, the Chipewyan artist began whittling slingshots and boats out of poplar bark. He calls his artistic ability “a gift, it’s natural.” His muse and materials were – and remain – the natural world, or whatever he observes in the wilderness. MacDonald is so inspired by nature that he carries a black marking pencil anytime he’s wandering the woods, so he can capture ideas when they strike him.
Today, his signature piece is the loon, sleek and perfect in its proportions, as well as black bears, fish, golden eagles, ravens and drums. After retiring from a long stint with the territorial government, the artist began teaching his craft in schools and the local college.
Think outside the gallery
Mark Preston wears two hats. The artist in him is allowed out in formal galleries and with educated collectors. The rest of the time, to stay in the game as a full-time artist, he’s all business. “My main focus is to produce at a level where I can hire people to do most of the labour part of my art business,” he says of his Tlingit-style jewelry and prints.
The Yukon-born 43-year-old inscribed his first etchings on a copper penny in 1990 and has been engraving ever since. Chunky bracelets, silver rings, belt buckles – whatever inspires Preston, he creates. When the Ted Harrison Artist Retreat opened in Carcross, Yukon in 2003, they chose Preston as their first artist-in-residence. It was three months of relief from the pressures of the marketplace, and Preston took the opportunity to upgrade his skills. “The time there reintroduced me to a computer. Now I design everything there,” he says. “I can produce 10 times the capacity I used to.”
Recent exhibits include a spot in the Art Underground space, located in a basement on Whitehorse’s Main Street, and a piece at the Yukon Arts Centre: a sculpture made from birch, glass and copper, entitled “We Are Not Alone.”
