LUCY TASSEOR TUTSWEETOK (1934-2012) ARVIAT (ESKIMO POINT)
Family, c. 1980-82
stone, 10.5 x 9.25 x 10 in (26.7 x 23.5 x 25.4 cm)
indistinctly signed.

ESTIMATE: $10,000 — $15,000

Provenance
An Ottawa Collection.

At first I was carving seals and polar bears and not people. I did this three times and each time they were rejected. Finally, when I proceeded to carve again, I sat still for a long time. Suddenly a thought occurred to me and I remembered the words my grandfather Ulibbaq Isumatarjuaq told me on one of our hunting trips. Possibly with thoughts in his mind, he started to form something out of sand and began placing stones around it. I took that imagination and applied it to carving. [1]

All we can say is thank goodness that Lucy Tasseor’s bears and seals were rejected. She presumably began carving c. 1965 when she and her husband Richard Tutsweetok moved to Arviat from Rankin Inlet. By 1967 she was carving lovely single figures, mothers and children, and the clusters of heads and faces for which she is renowned; five pieces by her were chosen for the famous Sculpture/Inuit exhibition that traveled the world in 1971-73 (and five by her friend Pangnark).

Family dates from the ten-year period 1975-1985, during which she produced most of her larger sculptures and several of her masterpieces, including Mother with Two Children and Family Group (this auction, Lots 55 and 88). [2] In some cases, dynamic strength is derived from the interplay of relatively few and relatively naturalistic figures. Family attains its sense of power through the palpable sense of frenetic movement and energy as the myriad heads and faces pull and strain to escape the confines of the fortress-like mountain of stone. We barely realize that one of these subjects must be the mother until we notice the small arms – but these are so wide apart that they become symbolic rather than functional. Impressive.

1. The artist interviewed by Mark Kalluak in Pelts to Stone: A History of Arts & Crafts Production in Arviat, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 1993, p. 32.
2. For other fine examples see First Arts, 30 Nov. 2021, Lot 79; First Arts, 12 June 2023, Lot 75; Norman Zepp, Pure Vision, 1986, cats. 39-41.

References: For a similar work see Norman Zepp, Pure Vision: The Keewatin Spirit (Regina: Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery, 1986), cat. 41, p. 95.