An exhibit of Eskimo Graphic Arts and Sculpture will be on display in Washington's Department of the Interior Art Galleries beginning Tuesday, November 8 through December 31. Featured will be the work of Canadian Eskimos from the famed Cape Dorset area, located at the southern tip of Baffin Island. Stone-cut prints and a variety of small sculptures will be shown. Hours for the exhibit, sponsored by the Center for Arts of Indian America, will be from 10:00 a.m. to 4: 00 p.m., Monday through Friday.
According to the Center's president, Mrs. Stewart L. Udall, wife of the Interior Secretary, the showing will be the largest of its kind ever displayed in the Nation’s capitol. Over 300 individual pieces will be exhibited, one-of-a-kind designs that quickly become collector’s items. All items will be available for purchase, in prices ranging from $5 to $500. To satisfy the anticipated demand. for the art pieces as Christmas gifts, the Center will replace sold pieces at once with comparable ones direct from the Eskimo Fine Arts Association in Ottawa.
Included among the outstanding artists represented in the exhibit will be the works of Kanangenak, former president of the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative; Parr, a producer of drawings of birds, animals and people in a style that is so completely his own that critics have marveled at his source of inspiration; Kiahshuk, whose vivid memory is stored with pictures of the old days and the great hunts, and a young Eskimo mother, Kenojuak, noted for her poetic bird studies.
“Eskimo carvings have a great impact that draws attention, no matter who looks at them," says Edna Massey, Secretary of the Center, who has arranged the display. "A hunter’s arm is half-raised in greeting and the archer reveals more tension by his stance than his drawn bow; a mother-and-child piece establishes in the mind of the beholder a feeling of unity that is universal in its appeal; a carving of Nuliajuk, goddess of the seals, bespeaks benignantly to both man and animal, alike."
Mrs. Massey, who purchases American Indian Art for government buildings here and abroad, remarks that the same impact in fact holds true of the Cape Dorset prints, each a limited edition. To create them, the Eskimo first flattens and polishes a large slab of soapstone, upon which the design is transferred in a strong, simple statement quite similar to the carving technique. The stone is deeply inked with the design and then a sheet of fine paper is placed on the surface, and the image is transferred from the stone engraving to the paper by using a small tampon or with the fingers.
"Perhaps the most surprising thing about Eskimo Art,” says Edna Massey, “is that most all Eskimo adults who become interested in it take an active part in creating pleasing and highly salable work. The fat, bulging weight of walrus, the sleek strength of bears, and the primitive, honest directness of all Eskimo forms have charmed the museums, the art galleries and the public."
