Signed Vintage Soapstone Carving

Possibly by Inuit artist Paulosie Sivuak

Very special piece

The Inuit are a Native American people whose homelands are in the Canadian Arctic.  Povungnituk is a village on the eastern shores of Hudson Bay in Arctic Quebec. 

Eskimo art is not just imagination; it really shows how hard the old Eskimo life was. . . . Since Eskimo artists can’t speak your language, they tell you, with their art, how their grandfathers struggled . . .”

(Pauloosie Sivuak in Inuit Artists’ Biographies, 1968)

When I have to work with a stone, I follow the shape first of the stone. I try to figure out how it’s going to look, and which side should be the bottom” (Sivuak in Mitchell 1998: 54). Sivuak experimented with a variety of tools and remembered using ulus, pocket knives, files, and handmade chisels to produce his work.