Arctic Spirit: Inuit Art from the Albrecht Collection at the Heard Museum

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University. She is the author of several books, including The
Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek and Margaret
Laurence: The Long Journey Home.

Daniel and Martha L. Albrecht’s collection of Northern Native Art is
one of the finest of its kind. Their plan was to create a comprehensive
circumpolar collection for the Heard Museum that would educate visitors
about Arctic peoples and their cultures. Since its founding in 1929, the
museum has collected and exhibited the art of indigenous peoples from
around the world. Its Inuit collection, which favours the Kitimeot
region and the artists of Baker Lake, is already one of the most
important in North America.

In Arctic Spirit, Ingo Hessel addresses the worlds of animals and
humans, along with the supernatural, namely myths and legends. He
writes: “People are my favorite subjects … I don’t carve a real
likeness, I just think of how people used to live out on the land.”
Hessel carves in stone, using an axe and occasional power tools.

The section in the book titled “Two Artists Speak,” focuses on
William Noah of Baker Lake and Pitaloosie Saila of Cape Dorset. Among
Hessel’s many fascinating artist interviews, those two particularly
stand out. Noah, born in 1944, is the only son of seven children. He
moved to Baker Lake because the federal department of Indian Affairs and
Northern Development threatened to cut their family allowance benefits
if they continued to live farther away. From the age of 13 he lived
alone in Winnipeg, attending school and taking courses in carpentry and
art. After years of struggle, he returned to the area (now part of
Nunavut) to live by his art. Pitaloosie Saila aims at dispelling “some
of our myths and misconceptions.” He notes that stone carving is
difficult work, that many people are living on welfare, and “no one
wants to buy their carvings.” Both essays were edited from transcripts
of interviews Hessel conducted in 2004.

Arctic Spirit is a beautiful, carefully researched book with a wealth
of illustrations, most of them in colour.