Arts and crafts express the northern spirit

Unique arts and crafts are available in just about every community of the Northwest Territories. In larger communities, shops and galleries offer a wide selection of northern art, crafts, sculpture and jewellery. In smaller communities, there may be a local specialty, for example, moccasins, tufting work, birchbark baskets, designer clothing or canvas products. Northern festivals provide an opportunity to meet the artists and purchase unique collectibles.
For example, nearly one hundred artists from across the Northwest Territories participate in the annual Great Northern Arts Festival held in Inuvik. Smaller events are held each summer in Fort Simpson, Yellowknife, and Fort Smith.

Carvings

Carvings by Inuvialuit and Dene artists often reflect life in the Arctic - majestic polar bears and muskoxen, birds, stirring depictions of hunters and dramatic images of spirit figures or shamans.

There are two authentic traditions, here: one, the need to make useful tools for daily life, and the other, the wish to make objects for personal adornment. Amulets, dance masks, earrings, fasteners, combs and labrets were carved of ivory, bone and wood and handed down to us as symbols of powerful cultures of the past.

Today those traditions are expressed in the form of larger sculptures. Although most carvings and sculptures are said to be ‘soapstone', soapstone is rarely used. The stone often used is serpentine. Colours range from dull gray to white, and from shades of green to black. Siltstone, argillite, dolomite, and quartz are sometimes used as well. Other materials used for carving include baleen and bone from the whale, bone and antler from caribou, and muskox horn. Many works combine two or more materials.

No two pieces are ever alike. Stone carvings are seldom simply rough and grey, some pieces have a high polish, revealing blue, ochre, moss-green and black. Whether stone or bone, all carvings have qualities art lovers respond to - they seem made to be touched.

David Ruben Piqtoukun, Brian Noksana and Eli Nasogaluak bring Inuvialuit sensibilities to their work. Goota Ashoona originally from Cape Dorset, now works in Yellowknife, and sculptor John Sabourin of Fort Simpson has a Dene perspective.

Birchbark Baskets

Birchbark, and other types of bark containers were handy to carry all sorts of foods in the past. Today, the women of Fort Liard have lifted that traditional craft to a fine art, by creating unique shapes and decorating them with moosehair tufting, quillwork or layers of bark in subtle natural colours. Baskets are still stitched together in the traditional way with spruce root, with hinges and a tie of moosehide. These traditional containers are justly famous for their restrained beauty and precision of craft. Baskets come in various sizes, for various purposes. Every part is made by hand from natural materials gathered in the forest. Baskets are available from Acho Dene Native Crafts in Fort Liard.

Clothing and Footwear

For a wonderful reminder of your visit to the Northwest Territories, take home a pair of handsewn hide moccasins, gloves, or mukluks. Try on a fringed and beaded vest or jacket. The rich scent of home-tanned hide will carry you back to your northern adventure. Hides are still tanned by hand, then decorated with beads, embroidery or tuftings in original and unique patterns.

Each garment is one of a kind, an original created with an artisan’s imagination and craft. Warm, sturdy clothing is still made for family members of pure wool stroud or duffle, furs and hide. Home tanned hide, an art in itself, can be added to jackets or vests as a fringe, or yoke. Home tanned moosehide may shape the feet of moccasins or mukluks, or a fine warm pair of mitts. The beading or quillwork on each item is unique, and a true sign of the loving attention to detail of Dene craftswomen.

Moosehair Tufting

Tufting is a painstaking form of embroidery perfected by the women of Mackenzie Valley communities. Working with infinite patience, the craftswomen shape dyed moosehair into three-dimensional designs on a dark background. Symmetrical flowers are a favourite motif, but whole scenes are created by some of the more gifted artists. The work requires great patience and a steady hand.

Porcupine Quillwork

This traditional craft was developed long before materials like glass beads became available. Today, it's seen mostly in museum collections. But some women in Canada's Northwest Territories have preserved the old skills.

The quills are coloured with natural dyes, flattened, and woven into intricate patterns on clothing and baskets, a rare example of an ancient art form. Geometric bands of quills can be woven on a bow loom. These bands are used as belts, headbands or trim on garments and accessories. Weaving requires a high degree of patience, dexterity, and attention to detail.

Jewellery

The metal-worker's craft has been polished to a high art by artisans working with gold, silver, ivory, stone and bone. Of late, designers are also using high-quality Canadian diamonds to create distinctive jewellery. Dene celebrate their traditions with beading, quillwork, moosehair tufting and hide used in jewellery. Earrings might be made with feathers, iridescent beads and natural porcupine quills, often threaded on fine silver wire. Pins and necklaces are made of tufting or quillwork on hide. Jewel-like collars are woven of coloured threads and strung with transparent, shiny beads.

Paintings and prints

Archie Beaulieu and Antoine Mountain show work of unusual power, as do many younger Dene and Metis artists. Dawn Oman’s colourful art is available across the country in gift shops, as well as murals decorating buildings in Yellowknife. Limited-edition prints of works by northern artists are often available.
Print-making is the forte of the famous Holman print workshop at Ulukhaktok, which issues distinctive new editions each year. Started in the 1960s, the workshop has fostered the visions of such world famous artists as Kalvak, and Nigiyok.
There’s a host of talented visual artists based in the Northwest Territories, and many others who draw their inspiration for bold new art from the northern landscape. Graeme Shaw, who spent time in the north, Sheila Hodgkinson, a resident of Yellowknife, and many others are represented in northern galleries. Helene Croft and Kean Latham concentrate on northern skies. Janet Pacey casts a colourful cartoonist’s eye on northern life.