Word: dorset
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...great-grand-nephew of Texan Sam Houston, went north to paint. Houston was fascinated by the statuettes the Eskimos had made for centuries for their own pleasure and, once made, had tossed negligently aside. Houston took samples south, where collectors snapped them up. In 1951 Houston settled in Cape Dorset as the Canadian government's civil administrator and chief patron of the local artists. Once Houston had built carving into a business that grosses $150,000 each year, he looked for another art form into which to guide Canada's Eskimos. He remembered seeing incised drawings some Eskimos...
...year ago, Houston flew to Japan to learn the technique of printmaking, came back and taught it to the eager Cape Dorset artisans. But the Eskimo print method is still very much his own. He chips the face of the stone flat, then painstakingly files it smooth. Next he polishes the surface by rubbing it with seal oil. Then, brow creased, the Eskimo feels the stone, lets its texture and shape tell him what design is in it. As he works, he depends more on feel than sight to guide him, because the seal lamps make an igloo...
...terminology reflects this attitude. The word for a carving is sinun-guuak (a small thing-you-make); a print is titokuuak (marks you make with your hand). This humility results in the softest sells in all art history. An Eskimo who has journeyed for days to reach Cape Dorset will tell Houston: "I brought a block for a print along. It's no good, of course. I'm ashamed of it. As a matter of fact, I think it fell off the sled." While he is pro testing, his wife will go out, dig the block out from...
...artists live a more hazardous life. In the last year, two of Cape Dorset's twelve printmakers have met death on the ice fields. One of the deaths has given the new art form its first legend. Niviaksi-ak, 39, was already a famous carver when he took up prints. Of all the subjects he portrayed, the one that preyed most on his mind was bears. During the last months of his life, he pondered deeply on the soul of the great, inscrutable polar bear...
...next day, when Niviaksiak's companion and others returned to bury him, they found his body unmauled; the bear had not even come near him. Among Cape Dorset people there was only one explanation: Niviaksiak's art had probed too near, had offended the spirit of the great polar bear...