‘Carved in Stone’ showcases the artists behind the Inuit art

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This article was published 06/11/2020 (2156 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The first face that pops up in ‘Carved in Stone: Sanannguaqtit’ a new local documentary about Inuit artists, belongs to George Arlook. He’s smiling with his eyes and his teeth as he tells the story of an early stone sculpture – a little seal head he made in 1961.

“Hudson’s Bay bought it,” he said, for 75 cents.

The camera soon shows Arlook, who was born in 1949 and spent much of his life in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, sitting outside his West End home, chisel in hand and stone between his knees. It’s always thrilling to watch an artist at work, but in under an hour, Carved in Stone makes a compelling case that it’s even more thrilling if you know the artist’s story and heritage.

“It seems that artists are often lost behind their artwork,” Kailey Sheppard, an artist featured in the documentary said. “Because you just see the art piece and a lot of people don’t look much further than the art piece.”

Sheppard said something along those lines to filmmakers Angela Heck and Ivan Hughes while out for coffee a while back, and it became their film’s central thesis: the second part of its title, Sanannguaqtit, is Inuktitut for “the artists,” and Heck and Hughes let local Inuit artists like Arlook, Sheppard, Jocelyn Piirainen and Goota and Joe Ashoona share their histories and their work with the viewer without much interruption.

The resulting documentary debuts on CBC Manitoba and CBC’s Gem streaming service Nov. 7.

For both Heck and Hughes, whose Fringe Filmworks produced the film, the introduction to Inuit art came when they were young: Heck’s mother would bring home pieces from the Manitoba Craft Guild in the 1960s, and Hughes’ father, an anthropologist, would bring home pieces from Igloolik.

“I never heard the stories behind any of those pieces,” said Hughes. “They were anonymous, and I wish I could find those pieces again and hear the stories of the people who made them.” Heck adds, “I grew up surrounded by it, but I never knew much about it.”

With their film, Heck and Hughes share several of those stories with viewers, showcasing the artists, who often explain their family history, inspirations, and more.

The best example of this is the Ashoona family. Piirainen, an experimental artist and the assistant curator of Inuit art at the WAG, visits the family just outside Elie, Man., and films Goota and her son, Joe, at work. Originally from Cape Dorsett, Goota explains that her grandmother, Pitseolak Ashoona, was a talented artist, and that in their family, art is as hereditary as DNA.

Working outside on a bear carving, Joe proudly tells the camera that he’s a fourth-generation carver. “It’s just what I do,” he says. “It’s who I am.”

“Their family legacy is so rich and so storied, it really should be a much bigger part of our own Canadian identity,” Heck said.

At 45 minutes, the documentary is a quick bite of a topic that is worth enjoying for a whole meal, and Heck and Hughes both hope viewing it will inspire people to learn more about the people – their hands, their minds, their histories – who make the art possible.

Work on the project started in 2016, and Heck said it’s fortuitous that its completion aligns so closely with the long-awaited arrival of Qaumajuq, the WAG’s soon-to-open Inuit art centre.

“(The documentary) will provide some context for the new gallery, which is going to be a game-changer,” Heck said.

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca