.
Search
Email this articleE-mail this story  Discuss this articleWrite letter to editor  Discuss this articleOrder a classified ad

It's more than a dirty job

Kathleen Lippa
Northern News Services

Cape Dorset (July 12/04) - In ripped, dust covered cargo pants, art is made.

From afar a carver looks more like a sculpture than a man: covered in the dust of their work.

NNSL Photo/Graphic

Pitseolak Niviaqsi, photographed behind his house in Cape Dorset on July 3, later sold this goose to the Co-op. - Kathleen Lippa/NNSL photo


Up close you can see the stripes of an Adidas jacket and a cigarette dangling from lips. A mustache, eyebrows and hair, once jet black -- all is coated white in the dust from the marble and soapstone.

Like the carving they will soon sell to a tourist or the West Baffin Eskimo Co-op, the artist has a calm power and is undeniably intriguing in the most subtle ways.

The carvers of Dorset do not wear masks when they work, so you can see their intense faces and their eyes studying the stone and their tools.

Like the hockey players of yesterday, the carvers of Dorset prefer the action of their profession unshielded. They want to see and feel it all, know exactly what they are creating.

Noah Kelly stared hard at his polar bear last week, sitting in the makeshift studio beside his house.

When Kelly speaks about his craft you can barely hear him, but you listen all the same.

"We need a gallery, maybe in Iqaluit," said Kelly softly at one point -- he chuckles at the idea of "The Noah Kelly Gallery."

Kelly lived in Iqaluit and even attended Inuksuk high school for a time, before moving back to Dorset a few years ago when his father died.

He is a young carver who is expected to grow into a fine one if he keeps working on his craft.

His works have been getting snapped up by tourists and residents who like what he is doing and want to support him.

But carving is a tough road. Just paying for the gas for his ATV that carries him out to get stone, for example, is more expensive every year.

Meanwhile, in another part of town, Pitseolak Niviaqsi was about to have a very good day.

He may look the same as others around town, but his art suggests more age and experience. The goose he was busy carving would soon sell at the West Baffin Eskimo Co-op.