Home page

Text size

E-mail this page

PANNIQTUUQ/PANGNIRTUNG - Four textile artists in Pangnirtung began training in the art of tapestry weaving and craft weaving this year, carrying on a tradition that has flourished in the community for three decades.

The Uqqurmiut Centre for Arts and Crafts features the work of a variety of skilled weavers from the community. From left to right: Dorcas Young, Elena Akpalialuk, Anna Etuangat, Geela Keenainak, Kawtysie Kakee, Lucy Qaqqasiq, Lucy Komoartok, Agah Maniapik, Igah Etuangat and Meeka Akpalialuk. - photo courtesy of Deborah Hickman

Kathy Battye, Helen Kisa, Maria Atuantat and Eva Maniapik are learning to weave through the Uqqurmiut Centre for Arts and Crafts. Their training started in April and will continue until March.

"It takes a lot of training and practice to become a tapestry weaver to work at the calibre of skill that we need here," said the Centre's tapestry studio interim manager Deborah Hickman. "They were all unemployed so this is training which will employ them to be weavers working in Pangnirtung at the Uqqurmiut Centre. After a year if they choose to work here they'll be offered jobs."

The students are weaving scarves, shawls and blankets from wool. Eventually the students will be able to design their own patterns. They are also learning to weave large-scale tapestries.

Hickman and weaver Kawtysie Kakee are leading the program.

"Kakee has been here for a long time and now she is the head weaver," Hickman said. "She's an excellent tapestry weaver and a designer of tapestries and teacher. She's had quite a career."

Hickman studied at the Nova Scotia College of Artand Design and the Ontario College of Art. Kakee started as a weaver in 1975 and was trained at the centre.

Kakee is deaf and communicates with Hickman and the other weavers using written English and the community's traditional form of sign language.

"She doesn't get to use American sign language much in the studio but she gets to use it with people who come into the studio who speak it or if she goes out to an opening of a show or something like that she's able to speak with people," Hickman said.

While Kakee designs her own tapestries, most of the textile art is based on the work of other artists in the community, either contemporary work or drawings from the Centre's archives.

"The archives date back to the early 1970s but we don't use drawings from people who have passed away," Hickman said.

"So most of the drawings we're using now date back to not more than 20 years."

Contemporary artists are still drawing a lot of the same themes, such hunting, fishing, Inuit games, life on the land and the land itself, but they are drawing with new styles, Hickman said.

"They have developed a skill in drawing that the older, naive artists didn't have," she said. "There is a different look about the tapestries."

Most of the artists who create the drawings the tapestries are based on are in their 40s, but the centre works with one elder named Eleesapee Ishulukjuq. A full collection of her pieces was showcased in 2004 and her recent drawings continue to be interpreted by the weavers.

Hickman is also training the new tapestry studio manager. Lucy Qiqqasiq will begin the second year of the two-year training program in September.

The centre employs four weavers with another six weavers in the community who return to the studio occasionally

"There were many, many weavers over the years but a lot of them have retired from weaving," Hickman said. "There are some who will come back to work on a commission."

The centre is preparing to solicit commissions of grand tapestries such as the 10-foot by 22-foot work that hangs in the foyer of the legislative assembly. Titled Back Then, and designed after a watercolour by Joe Maniapik, the studio completed that tapestry in 2002.

"We want to build on that success and start to get more commissions based on the work of artists from around Nunavut," Hickman said.

The centre issued its first craft catalogue since 1996 this summer. Copies are available through the Centre or by download on its website.

Its 2007/2008 collection will go on display at the Iqaluit Fine Arts Gallery in November.