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September
14 , 2001
Carving a new niche
Three-week granite-carving
symposium held in Iqaluit
MIRIAM HILL
Nunatsiaq News
Bobby
Anavilo of Kugluktuk stands beside his partially finished granite
carving. Anavilo is one of six Nunavut carvers participating in
a granite-carving symposium in Iqaluit.
(PHOTO BY MIRIAM HILL)
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IQALUIT — At the base of the massive grey rock, shards of
granite lie like dry grass.
Farther up the rock, its form changes. An image of a woman appears,
her face emerging from the top of the piece.
The carver, dressed in coveralls coated in dust, removes his
safety goggles and grins widely. Beside him other carvers work
at their pieces, some under the cover of bright blue tarps. Electrical
cords wind across the ground, just beside the Bank of Montreal
building.
The whir of an electrical chisel makes it difficult to hear
the carver, so he moves closer to his work-in-progress —
into what he calls his "office."
Bobby Anavilo, of Kugluktuk, says he found out last year he’d
be participating in this year’s granite-carving symposium
in Iqaluit.
"Right away I thought, ‘I’m going to make something
that’s drum dancing,’" he says. "But when
I got to the piece, I wanted the bottom to be solid, so making
a mermaid fin is probably more solid than trying to cut out legs.
It’s just that much less work."
This is Anavilo’s first time working with granite, and his
first time working on such a large scale. He’s been given
the chance thanks to the continuation of a "millennium"
project started in 1999.
"We’ve accomplished what we set out to do, which was
open up that door, and now we’ll see what happens with it."
– Beth Beatty, NACA coordinator
The project consisted of a nine-week symposium funded by the
Canada Council. Beth Beatty, coordinator of the Nunavut Arts and
Crafts Association, said artists from both northern and southern
Canada produced 26 carvings, some of which can be seen at the
college and in front of Iqaluit’s elders’ centre.
The goal, she said, is for organizations around town to lease
the finished works as landscaping for their building lots.
This year the symposium will run for three weeks, with six carvers
from Repulse Bay, Baker Lake, Kugluktuk, Clyde River and Iqaluit.
It cost the council about $8,000 per person for their travel,
food, accommodation and an honorarium for the time spent here.
Inuk Charlie of Taloyoak was part of the first symposium. As
a result of his work he was invited to travel to Detroit to carve
a life-size polar bear in stone.
That’s the kind of result Beatty likes. "We’ve
accomplished what we set out to do, which was open up that door,
and now we’ll see what happens with it," she said.
Anavilo says he hopes to eventually sell his piece and have the
money help the Nunavut Arts and Craft Association.
But that comes later.
For now, he’ll continue using his tools — a 4.5-inch
diamond-blade grinder, a seven-inch grinder, a gas-powered 14-inch
cut-off saw with a diamond blade, and an electric hammer chisel
— to create a work of art by removing as little stone as
possible.
"It’s almost just like starting any kind of hard stone,"
he says, describing the process. "I’ve never carved
marble before. I’ve skipped the marble and gone to granite,
so I’m hoping marble’s going to be like butter,"
he says, his huge grin returning.
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