Lot 82
LUCY TASSEOR TUTSWEETOK (1934-2012) ARVIAT (ESKIMO POINT)
Mother with Children

, early 2000s
stone, 19.75 x 12 x 4.5 in (50.2 x 30.5 x 11.4 cm)
signed, "ᓗᓯ".

Provenance
Private Collection, USA.

Tasseor had carved mostly small and medium-sized works throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, but to avoid purchasing carving stone she and her husband Richard Tutsweetok began travelling on the land to gather suitable stones. They collected both large and small fieldstones, including the “bowling ball” stones that Tasseor became known for in the early 2000s, as well as rocks with more angular shapes. These stones were too hard for hand tools so Tasseor began working with electric grinders.

In its size and overall composition this monumental sculpture is truly reminiscent of Tasseor’s early masterpiece Faces with Igloos from 1971 in the Winnipeg Art Gallery collection. We actually wonder whether she might have been leafing through old catalogues and thought, “Hmm, I wonder if I could do something similar here…” ( ! ) Mother and Children confirms for us that Tasseor’s genius was her intuitive understanding of each stone that she found, even when she worked on a more “industrial” scale. This is one of the finest sculptures we know of from Tasseor’s late career.

References

For Faces with Igloos see Ingo Hessel, Inuit Art: An Introduction (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1998), fig. 81; also illustrated in Darlene Coward Wight, The Jerry Twomey Collection at the Winnipeg Art Gallery: Inuit Sculpture from the Canadian Arctic (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2003), p. 98, and in Norman Zepp, Pure Vision: The Keewatin Spirit (Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery, 1986), cat. 35. For another monumental work from the 1970s see Ingo Hessel, Arctic Spirit: Inuit Art from the Albrecht Collection at the Heard Museum (Phoenix: Heard Museum/Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2006), fig. 133. For other contemporaneous monumental examples see Walker’s Auctions, Ottawa, May 2018, Lot 126; November 2017, Lot 217.