Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services

NNSL (Nov 30/98) - In October, the Arctic lost one of its treasured carvers -- Charlie Ugyuk -- to cancer.

Ugyuk's work, which has received acclaim across North America, has been exhibited from Ottawa to Los Angeles.

"He was the strongest spiritual carver in the central Arctic," says Peter Lau, curator at the Gallery of the Midnight Sun in Yellowknife. "You won't see anything come close."

Lau is talking about the shaman carvings, or demon carvings as they are also known, that Ugyuk specialized in. These were popular in the south.

"It's where the money was," says Inuk Charlie, Ugyuk's son. But Charlie, who has also carved demons, explains the subject matter causes terrible nightmares. He himself has been plagued by such nightmares and won't carve them any more.

"You just can't imagine," he says.

Birds were his father's favourite subject.

"He loved making birds. He always had a fascination for falcons, probably because the falcon is a quite clever bird."

Ugyuk was a larger-than-life figure, a character.

"He was a big, big man -- he made Hulk Hogan look like nothing," says Charlie. "Everything was always to an extreme with him."

"He had his good side and his bad side," adds Charlie who remembers his father's perfectionism.

"If I carved something to be the same as my grandfather's, he'd say why are you doing that? You always had to do better, be better than anyone else."

Ugyuk's first carvings were not the large ones he came to do in his later years.

"He started with miniature carvings of ivory... not a whole lot of them...a very few over a long period of time...in the winter when it was dark," remembers Charlie.

The time for carving came once the hunting was done.

According to Charlie, his father carved whole dog teams that took years to complete. The dogs had inlaid teeth and tongues, delicate and painstaking work that was done entirely with home-made hand tools.

"Huskies tended to have spots, he even inlaid spots," adds Charlie.

It was in the early '70s, when the family moved to Taloyoak from the Natsilik area, about 112 kilometres away, that Ugyuk's hunting days were over. He began carving larger pieces in serpentine, a deep green Central Arctic stone. How he spent his days was determined by the wind. Ugyuk only carved outside.

"The only time he carved was when there was wind, when there was no wind he'd work with metal, make hunting tools," says Charlie, who now calls Cambridge Bay home.

As the demand for his work increased, Ugyuk would start carving at 8 a.m. and often keep at it until midnight.

Whether gazing on an Ugyuk falcon or one of his demons, the detail and strength of the work can be almost overwhelming. They are mesmerizing and the hand longs to feel the stone.

Ugyuk may have died thinking, as many carvers do, that he had not yet created his best work, but as an outsider, it's hard to believe there could be any better.