Glen Korstrom
Northern News Services

INUVIK (Jul 24/98) - Some call it magical. Others see it as an enchanting and wonderous opportunity to see and buy beautiful authentic Northern art.

However people view the Great Northern Arts Festival, it is livening up life in Inuvik while prolonging the stay of many tourists who stumbled upon a good thing.

"I can't believe my good fortune," said Kathy Clark from the Kenai peninsula in Alaska as she threaded a needle through a bead at a beading workshop.

"I wanted, for all my life, to learn how to do this. Honestly, I love beadwork."

Clark said her mother used to make mukluks and parkas but never did any beadwork, so she never learned as a child.

"I think it's great, skills like this can be passed down through the generations."

Cathy Henderson is visiting from Dublin, Ireland and is documenting the festival by doing watercolor portraits and drawings of the faces of many artists.

"There are so many fascinating faces," she said as she carried two cross-directional microphones around.

Aside from documenting the festival with her artwork, Henderson is freelancing radio pieces to the BBC. And that means capturing sounds of chiselling, chipping as well as the speaking of many aboriginal languages.

Other people have a different agenda.

"This is an opportunity (for wholesalers) to meet the artists all in one place," said festival co-founder Charlene Alexander.

She said there are at least four wholesalers whose main reason for visiting the festival is to meet and recruit artists whose work they like so they can build future partnerships involving buying large shipments of art.

"This is the best festival ever," she said.

Co-coordinators Tanya Van Valkenberg and Marilyn Dzaman worked full-time all year to put the festival together and Alexander praises them by saying, "It shows."

On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, $45,000 worth of artwork was sold. And Van Valkenberg said that Monday sales did not seem to tail off, though the receipts had not been counted by presstime.

"I'm thrilled to bits," she said of the festival's initial success.

The art, music and dancing exhibition runs until July 26.