LUCY TASSEOR TUTSWEETOK (1934-2012) ARVIAT (ESKIMO POINT)
Mother and Child, late 1990s
stone, 7.5 x 4.5 x 5 in (19.1 x 11.4 x 12.7 cm)
signed, "ᓗᓯ."

Provenance
Private Collection, Santa Fe, NM.

By the mid 1990s Tasseor had become frustrated by the cost and lack of supply of carving stone. She and her husband Richard Tutsweetok began to collect large and small fieldstones on the land. The mostly oval shapes of these stones, and the fact they necessitated the use of power tools, defined her late style. Mother and Child is one of the loveliest small carvings from the period we have seen. It is a surprisingly naturalistic work from this period. Its interesting textural effects, created with an angle grinder rather than files, are beautifully expressive.

References: This work reminds us of a slightly later, considerably larger sculpture, Mother with Children, in the First Arts July 2021 collection, Lot 82. See the section on Lucy Tasseor in Norman Zepp, Pure Vision: The Keewatin Spirit, (Regina: Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery, 1986), pp. 86-95; for similar works see Faces Emerging from Stone, (cat. 39), and Head Cluster (cat. 40). See also Feheley Fine Arts, Lucy Tasseor: I Turn to Stone (Toronto: Feheley Fine Arts, 2015), solo exhibition catalogue with an essay by Ingo Hessel.