Home page

Text size

E-mail this page

This carving depicts mother with a child on her back swinging a sling as she hunts birds on the land. Goota Ashoona's carvings representing maternal love and strength are always in high demand around the country. - Daron Letts/NNSL photo

Daron Letts
Northern News Services
Published Friday, October 24, 2008

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Renowned carver, textile artist and teacher Goota Ashoona has been invited to teach her various arts at a prestigious institution in Indianapolis, Ind.

The Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art will host Ashoona as an artist in residence for a month in the new year. Ashoona will carve for two weeks, demonstrate sewing arts for a week and run art programs for children for a week.

In the evenings she will share her stories using slides by local photographers Pablo Saravanja and Bob Galipeau. The images depict her life as an Inuit artist based in Yellowknife as well as her life back home in Cape Dorset.

The museum houses a wealth of indigenous and American art, including work by N.C. Wyeth, Andy Warhol, Georgia O'Keefe, Frederick Remington and Kay Walking Stick.

Ashoona visited Coral Harbour in Nunavut during the summer where she collected a large number of whale bones. She will be carving monumental pieces from that bone this fall. She and her family will open a new art studio downtown next month.