An artistic future?
Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Nov 24/00) - Bob Kussy is one of those people that just can't sit still.
Propelled by a vigorous imagination and an astonishing number of ideas, he's always on the go. Teaming up with artist-wife Goota Ashoona just means that creativity has no bounds in the Ashoona-Kussy home, which includes a pair of pre-teen boys.
Saturday night, at the celebrity auction, the couple will unveil new work, a piece they've donated to the NWT Council for Disabled People. But it's more than "new work," says Kussy. "It's a new art form."
Kussy, who married into the renown Ashoona family of Cape Dorset, explains that the new work combines the past and the future.
"When Houston was travelling through the North with (an Inuit carver) 50-odd years ago, the carver happened to comment, when Houston pulled out a package of cigarettes, that somebody had to be really, really skilled to produce the little sailor on the pack time and time again.
"He was under the impression that people drew it on each pack. Houston sort of explained how printing works and the Dorset prints came about. So if you understand the context of that conversation about somebody's inquisitiveness -- one time, I went to a rummage sale here and I got a silver pin for my wife. Many months later, Goota asked me how they were made."
Kussy explained casting and stamping, and Ashoona suggested the same could be done with Inuit art.
"We had a long conversation at the kitchen table, and we decided we should." While investigating where the jewelry might be made, Kussy became intrigued by glass-work.
"The 1950 to 1980 period will be to the children and grand-children of the carvers and printmakers the classic period of Inuit art. It will tell who they were and show their cultural values and their lifestyle," says Kussy.
He then adds that "someone has to explore new mediums and new technologies. Someone has to take the first step, and that's what we're doing now."
Kussy started thinking of ways that Inuit images and glass might be combined.
Enter Lorne Scott of Edmonton.
"He's a real genius at glass," says Kussy.
For the uninitiated, Scott's role is similar to that of the stone cutter in the print-making process. He has, in effect, transferred two images, Boys in Kayak and Shaman's Wife by Pitseolak Ashoona, Goota's grand-mother, onto three- dimensional glass.
"There are ten thousand different techniques that I use," says Scott.
"But essentially, it's a sand-blasting process, to cut away the glass and create a relief or depth in the glass."
The artist says it looks spectacular, but that it's hard to describe if you haven't done it or seen it. At first, Scott was worried about plagiarism.
"I'm not interested in that," he says. "I guess I am duplicating. I guess I would consider myself the stone-cutter in this process."
Both pieces bear Ashoona's signature, as well as Scott's.
"I get to help the Ashoona family expose their work to everyone possible, plus expose my methods. This is the neatest avenue to take," he says.
One piece will be auctioned off at the Celebrity Auction Saturday night at the Explorer Hotel.
