Ultima Thule: Cape Dorset, part IIDorset Fine Arts

The Kinngait Studios house the co-op's graphic arts program and produce a print collection each year.

Founded in 1959, the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative printmakers started turning sketches into lithographs or stone-cuts. Limited numbers of each work are now printed and sent each autumn across North America. But the best venue to view these beautiful works and meet with the famed artists themselves is the re-named Kinngait Co-op at Cape Dorset.

The Kenoujaq Cultural Center is a recent venue, a small museum/gallery for visitors.

"When you see this work hanging on a wall, it's not what you expect. It's new, provocative, edgy and often joyful."

Bill Ritchie,
manager of Kinngait Studio.

Some selected artists:

Kenojuaq Ashevak ( ? - 2013) was the first and most acclaimed artist in the Dorset Print Co-op, a pioneer mainly dedicated to lithographies of arctic birds. Honorary doctor at Queen's and Toronto, she has works at all major Canadian museums.

Birds over the sun.

Loon with purple flowers.

Dancing Ravens.

Ashevak died in 2013 at age 87. She signed: ᑭᓇᐊᓯᐃ.

Abraham Etungat (1911-1999), a carver in soapstone and serpentine from Cape Dorset, has one of his works reproduced in large scale at Ontario:

Bird of Spring, soapstone, 1975.

A bronze replica (1981) at Calgary's Devonian Gardens, Alberta.

Kavavaow Mannomee (fr. Qavavau Manumie) (1958 -) also makes some magnificent bird prints - loons, owls...

Loons take flight, 1992.

Grey Owl, 1993.

Feathering the nest.

Ningeokuluk Teevee (Cape Dorset, 1963 - ) works on more elaborate compositions:

Owls in the Moonlight, 2007

Crosscurrent, 2005

Arctic appetizer, 2009

Surfacing, 2005

Osuitok Ipeelee (1922-2005) was one of the Dorset Art school's founders; he is a fine carver of elegant caribous, in green soapstone and caribou antlers: