Shaman Riding Bear Helping Spirit

Akeeaktashuk began carving in 1949 at the invitation of visiting artist, James Houston, and he became one of the most prolific Inuit carvers until his premature death in 1954. His most typical subjects were hunters gripping weapons in one or both hands, or mother-and-child images. This striking piece depicts a shaman riding on his bear spirit helper as he travels to the spirit realm to intercede on behalf of those from his camp experiencing hardship. The bear exhibits joint marks that are similar to those on shamanic carvings from the prehistoric Dorset period.

George Swinton moved to Winnipeg in 1954 to serve on the faculty of the School of Art at the University of Manitoba. He had emigrated from Vienna in 1937; studied at the Art Students League in New York; was artist-in-residence at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario; and worked as a curator at the National Gallery of Canada and the Saskatoon Art Centre. He had bought his first Inuit carving when in Montreal in 1950, and this early interest soon lead to him assisting the Hudson Bay Company with assessing carvings after they arrived in Winnipeg in crates from the company’s Arctic trading posts. His passion for Inuit art was reinforced by his first trip to the arctic, to Inukjuak, in 1957. He wrote two books that are known to every student and collector of Inuit art: Eskimo Sculpture/Sculpture esquimaude (1965) and Sculpture of the Eskimo (1972).

In 1960 the Gallery made a serious commitment to collecting Inuit art when it purchased 139 major sculptures from Swinton. In 1976 the WAG purchased a second collection from George Swinton consisting of over 900 sculptures, prints, and drawings. An exhibition of the Swinton Collection was held several years later, in 1987, with an accompanying catalogue. In 1989, a further collection of 85 artworks was donated to the gallery.

A sales exhibition of Inuit carvings at the Montreal-based Canadian Handicrafts Guild in November 1949 is widely recognized as marking the beginning of an artistic industry that was to transform the lives of many Inuit. The use of stone to create carvings for export to southern markets began with a test purchase by the Guild in 1949 in the Inukjuak area of Nunavik.
In the early 1950s, the procurement of carving stone was largely a matter of gathering it from the ground, especially beaches. As demand for stone carvings increased, so did the search for more attractive carving stones. For many people, “carving stone” is synonymous with “soapstone,” but this is a com¬mon misconception. Soapstone is a specific type of rock called steatite. It contains a high proportion of the mineral talc, which gives the stone a waxy or soapy feel. Grey steatite stones have been mainly used by carvers from Baker Lake and Arviat, although a harder, dark-coloured peridotite stone from a quarry site at Jigging Point, at the east end of Baker Lake, has also been used by Baker Lake artists.
Many artists find steatite too soft for sculpting because it does not hold a good polish and will not allow intricate detail. The most desirable carving stones are serpentinite, and deposits of serpentinite have been located in most areas with carving activity. The stone can vary from a bright jade-green colour, as often associated with the sculpture from the community of Kinngait (Cape Dorset), to a nearly black colour mined by carvers from the Kitikmeot communities of Taloyoak, Gjoa Haven, and Kugaaruk. Currently, the main source of serpentinite on south Baffin Island is a large quarry site in Korok Inlet. Kitikmeot carvers mine their stone from a deposit near Murchison Lake.
Both serpentinite and steatite are types of igneous rocks that derive from molten material, such as volcanic magma. In a second main category are carving stones that derive from sedimentary rocks formed by the compression of layers of sediment. Marble and argillite are examples of such stones used by Inuit carvers. A large surface deposit of white marble stretches for miles north of Andrew Gordon Bay on south Baffin Island, but the hardness of this stone deters many carvers who do not have the necessary specialized tools. Argillite is a highly prized carving stone because it is soft enough to carve yet hard enough to produce a good polish. Its fine sedimentary layering lends a distinctive banded texture to carvings. Argillite is commonly used in sculpture from Sanikiluaq and Arctic Bay. In Sanikiluaq it occurs in varied shades of grey-green and in Arctic Bay the stone is a distinctive grey-ochre colour.
For more detailed information, see Susan Gustavison, Northern Rock: Contemporary Inuit Stone Sculpture. Kleinberg: McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 1999.