Lucy Tasseor Tutsweetok (1934-2012) was one of Canada’s most prominent artists. She was born at Nunalla in northern Manitoba, just south of the border with the Northwest Territories (now Nunavut). Known simply as Tasseor, she was a member of the Caribou Inuit whose territories were centred in and around Ennadai Lake in the Kivalliq region. When famine struck in the late 1950s, she initially went to Rankin Inlet, but later settled in the community of Arviat. In the mid 1960s, she began making stone sculpture for sale at the Arviat cooperative. Working alongside such other soon-to-be recognized artists as Andy Miki and John Pangnark, she helped to establish a highly distinctive school of sculptural expression that was more abstract and elemental than Inuit sculpture from other areas of the North. She became known for minimalist unpolished sculptures portraying mothers and children and families, represented through clusters of faces.

Tasseor’s work has been included in several important exhibitions over the years including Pure Vision: The Keewatin Spirit organized by Regina’s Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery. In 1992, she was one of two Inuit artists included in Indigena: Contemporary Nat Perspectives in Canadian Art, a landmark exhibition organized by the Canadian Museum of Civilization. In 2011, the Art Gallery of Ontario presented a solo exhibition of her work. She also completed a several important private and public commissions. The most impressive of these was produced in 1992, when she worked on a massive limestone sculpture that is in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.