You can usually tell a carver’s home by the greenish-grey dust of the front yard. The artist, if he or she (mostly he) is working outside, might be covered in so much of that same dust he resembles one of those Chinese terracotta warriors unearthed a few years ago. Many artists use an upturned cable spool as a workbench for bigger pieces or they sit on a slab of cardboard or plywood on the ground to work on smaller pieces.
Cape Dorset artists rarely use the term sculpture to describe the three-dimensional representational objects they make. They prefer the term ‘carving’ and perhaps rightly so. There is a direct and immediate bond between the medium of expression, the environment they live in and the history and development of their culture. Carving is a direct extension of the skills developed through centuries of fashioning and manipulating tools and implements by hand.
Cape Dorset artists rarely use the term sculpture to describe the three-dimensional representational objects they make. They prefer the term ‘carving’ and perhaps rightly so. There is a direct and immediate bond between the medium of expression, the environment they live in and the history and development of their culture. Carving is a direct extension of the skills developed through centuries of fashioning and manipulating tools and implements by hand.