Word: eskimo
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...border, in a land of frozen inlets and howling winds, above the upper reaches of Hudson Bay, is Cape Dorset. Only a cluster of frame houses, snow huts and translucent plastic igloos on the barren southern coast of Baffin Island, it is the trading station for some 320 Eskimos living in scattered three-and four-family camps along the island's frozen coast. It is also the center of the best folk art this side of Africa. Already famed as the most skilled of the Eskimo sculptors, the Cape Dorset people have recently taken up a new art form...
...Eskimos take creativity for granted and find it hard to fathom why anyone would want to collect something another person has made. In a land where a man can be killed by a glass of water thrown in his face (it freezes in flight), and where the main supply of food comes from the hunt, the Eskimo has developed an uncanny sense of observation. He can mimic a stranger on sight, often fools seals by flapping his arms like flippers until he is near enough to throw a harpoon. In his art, he can catch the look of the injured...
...Smoke & Feel. Canadian Eskimo art went unnoticed until 1948, when Jim Houston, 38, a great-great-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...
...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...
...Small Thing. Even with his new fame, no Eskimo considers his art as serious work. It is just something to do when the weather keeps him from hunting. Even the 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...