LUCY TASSEOR TUTSWEETOK (1934-2012) ARVIAT (ESKIMO POINT)
Family Group with Igloo, c. 1972-74
stone, 9 x 9.5 x 3 in (22.9 x 24.1 x 7.6 cm)
signed, "ᓗᓯ / ᑕᓯᐅ".

Provenance
Inuit Gallery of Vancouver, BC;
Acquired from the above by John and Joyce Price, Seattle.

Exhibitions
Vancouver, Inuit Gallery of Vancouver, Classic Inuit, October 2005, cat. 2.

Publications
Melanie Zavediuk, et. al., Classic Inuit, (Vancouver; Inuit Gallery of Vancouver, 2005), cat. 2.

I was told people just like to touch and feel my carvings even if the surface is rough. People are pleased about me and are satisfied just to be able to run their hands [along] my carvings [1].

It is not always just the tactile allure of their surface textures that make Tasseor’s sculptures so touchable. As is the case with this early 1970s masterpiece by the artist, it is also the sensuous forms of the semi-abstract heads and faces themselves that invite our caresses. With Family Group with Igloo, Tasseor did much more than simply “follow the shape of the stone”; the composition is one of her most visually dynamic creations and certainly one of her loveliest. We are reminded of one of Tasseor’s most revealing comments to us in a 1989 interview:

One time a group of singers came to the community. My daughter was watching me while I was carving. She asked me if carving a sculpture was the same as singing. I replied, “Yes, it is” [2].

We know that Tasseor’s life was a struggle, and that carving was work she did to feed her family. But we also know that carving gave her great joy. If any of this artist’s important sculptures could be said to be a song of joy expressed in stone, surely it is Family Group with Igloo. Glorious.

1. The artist quoted in Kalluak, Pelts to Stone: A History of Arts & Crafts Production in Arviat, 1993, p. 32.
2. From a 1989 artist interview with Ingo Hessel in Inuit Art Quarterly, Winter 1990, Vol. 5, p. 15.

References: For the full interview with Mark Kalluak, see Mark Kalluak, Pelts to Stone: A History of Arts & Crafts Production in Arviat, (Gatineau: Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 1993), p. 31-35. For the interview with Ingo Hessel, see Ingo Hessel, “Arviat Stone Sculpture: Born of the Struggle with an Uncompromising Medium”, Inuit Art Quarterly, Winter 1990, Vol. 5, No. 1, p. 4-15. For other important Family Scenes with the snow house motif, see: Norman Zepp, Pure Vision: The Keewatin Spirit, (Regina: Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery, 1986), cat. 35; also illustrated in Ingo Hessel, Inuit Art: An Introduction, (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1998), fig. 81, and elsewhere. See also First Arts, Toronto, 30 November 2021, Lot 79. For another see Ingo Hessel, Arctic Spirit: Inuit Art from the Albrecht Collection at the Heard Museum, (Vancouver / Phoenix: Douglas & McIntyre / Heard Museum, 2006), cat. 133. For several other important examples of Tasseor’s work in the Pure Vision catalogue see the section on pages 86-95. For five fine early works see Canadian Eskimo Arts Council, Sculpture Inuit: Masterworks of the Canadian Arctic, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), figs. 236, 286, 360, 390, 393.