Jason Unrau
Northern News Services

Inuvik (Oct 21/05) - To art lovers in the region, Holman printmaker Mary Okheena has become a household name thanks to lively and colourful prints depicting the land, the people and their stories.

Accomplished print artist Mary Okheena works on a project as a student of the Traditional Arts and Crafts program at Aurora College. -

So why in the world has Okheena enroled in Aurora College's Traditional Arts and Crafts program?

"Even though I know how to do prints and some sewing, I still have a lot to learn," she explained, while cutting out a design for a pair of mitts. "And this course has really opened my mind, got me inspired."

This fresh inspiration is good news for Okheena and fans of her artwork since, as she says, she ran out of ideas at the beginning of the 1990's and "kind of went blank."

Apart from a few prints, including one commissioned for the 2000 Great Northern Arts Festival poster, and re-printing former pieces, she turned out very little in the way of new artwork.

Prior to that, Okheena estimates that she came up with 'five or six' new drawings each year, from which she created between 25 and 50 prints each.

With the Traditional Arts and Crafts course focused on sewing, Okheena hopes to bring her design sense to a different medium and learn a little about her people's past.

"I grew up with artists so drawing was not a problem," she said, noting that her art career began in 1977 making prints for other artists. By the early 1980's she had the confidence to create her own work.

"But I wasn't really taught about sewing or tanning hides, how our elders did all those things. Here we are lucky because we have the tools to do it but then they had to make their own."

In comparing sewing to her speciality of printmaking, Okheena says there are many similarities but that sewing can be a little more forgiving.

"When I do a drawing, I think about what colours I want to use and how I want it to look and it's the same with sewing," she said.

"With sewing I can fix mistakes by undoing them, but with a print it's already there (on the paper) so that's hard to fix."