LUKE IKSIKTAARYUK (1909-1977) QAMANI’TUAQ (BAKER LAKE)
Bird Spirit, c. 1965-67
antler and stone, 4.5 x 5 x 1.5 in (11.4 x 12.7 x 3.8 cm)
signed, ᐃᓯᑕᔪ".

Provenance
Collection of Vivian Julien, a schoolteacher who worked in the Canadian Arctic from the late 1950s until the mid 1970s;
by descent to a Private Collection, Ontario.

Several Baker Lake artists carved antler depictions of birds for about ten years beginning in the early 1960s, but to our recollection none has been definitively attributed to Luke Iksiktaaryuk. This fabulous Bird Spirit (importantly one of Iksiktaaryuk’s earliest documented works), is nothing like contemporaneous examples by his artist peers. With simplicity and grace, it eloquently reveals this artist’s early and abiding interest in spirituality and shamanism. While birds appear only rarely in Iksiktaaryuk’s sculpture, some of his most impressive depictions of shamans are winged and thus engaged in spirit journeys; interestingly birds are illustrated in several of his drawings and prints (see the 1970 Baker Lake print catalogue for lovely examples).

References: For more typical, later works by the artist (winged shamans), see Norman Zepp, Pure Vision: The Keewatin Spirit, (Regina: Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery, 1986), cat. 80-2, pp. 137-139; Gerald McMaster, ed., Inuit Modern: The Samuel and Esther Sarick Collection, (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2010), pp. 132-133; Ingo Hessel, Inuit Art: An Introduction, (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre / New York: Harry Abrams / London: British Museum Press, 1998), fig. 85, p. 107.