The fine art of co-operation
Northern Images helps indigenous artists carry on creative tradition
Yellowknifer is turning its attention again to shopping local with profiles of local businesses. We'll be asking business owners to describe what has contributed to their success in Yellowknife, and for any advice they may have for anyone else thinking of starting their own business.
Daron Letts
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, November 19, 2014
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
About 20 artists, including some elders, visit Northern Images every week, selling everything from paintings to mukluks. The downtown gallery buys much of their work.
Sally Joyce manages the Northern Images Store, which stocks crafts and pieces from the 54th Cape Dorset print collection. - Daron Letts/NNSL photo |
"Some of them live here, but in many cases they're visiting Yellowknife for medical purposes." said Sally Joyce, gallery manager. "Our mission is to support the artists of Canada's North. The money spent in here stays in the North, fulfilling that mission."
Established 44 years ago, Northern Images operates as the retail marketing arm of Arctic Co-operatives Limited, which is owned and controlled by 31 community-based co-operatives in the NWT and Nunavut, and growing. The co-ops are independently-owned Dene and Inuit businesses that represent a variety of retail and service sectors.
Artists in the communities approach managers at Co-op stores throughout the North with their carvings, a photo is taken and sent to the Co-op's buyer in Toronto, and a price is offered. The carvings are then shipped to Toronto and sold wholesale to southern galleries, or ordered by the Northern Images galleries in Yellowknife and Churchill, Man.
"We are the largest supplier of Canadian Inuit art in the world," said Joyce.
Each year, the gallery hosts the NWT premiere of the Cape Dorset print collection, issued every fall by Cape Dorset Fine Arts, which also maintains a Toronto office to reach southern galleries.
Of the 38 pieces in Northern Images had from of the 54th collection, 25 are left, said Joyce.
Work by hundreds of other indigenous artists, including textiles and apparel, beadwork, paintings, prints and glassware is on display.
Some work by late elder artists such as Kenojuak Ashevak of Cape Dorset, Nunavut, Mona Thrasher of Inuvik, who used to bring paintings still wet to the gallery to sell four times a year, and ivory carver Emily Elluitok of Kugaaruk are still in the gallery.
Contemporary elders, such as sewer Lena Wolki of Sachs Harbour, continue to sell to the gallery. Earlier this month she brought a hockey bag filled with kamiik and other apparel for the gallery to sell.
"That's why we do what we do here," said Joyce. "We buy from elders so they can keep making their crafts."
