Latest Cape Dorset print show offers 34 stellar works

Art lovers will get a chance see many images from Kinngait Studios’ well-known Inuit artists in the 51st Cape Dorset print collection, which opens this weekend at Iqaluit’s Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum and galleries across Canada and around the world.

The 2010 collection of prints, priced from $400 to $1,800, includes work by Kananginak Pootoogook, Kavavaow Mannomee, Shuvinai Ashoona, Kenojuak Ashevak, Pitaloosie Saila, Tim Pitsiulak, Ohotaq Mikkigak and Ningeokuluk Teevee, who produced nine prints in the collection’s 34 works.

Teevee is one of the most versatile and intelligent graphic artists to emerge from the Kinngait Studios, notes the Cape Dorset Fine Arts website.

“Her unique approach to interpreting traditional legends and stories into her drawings and prints has captivated both the traditional and contemporary Inuit art collector,” says the website.

Teevee, born May 27, 1963, is the daughter of the late Joanasie Salomonie — “a community leader and much loved in Cape Dorset for his sense of humour, mischief and compassion” — and his wife Kanajuk.

In the fall of 2009, Teevee’s first children’s book, Alego was short-listed for the Governor General’s Literary Award for children’s illustration.

With text in Inuktitut and English, Alego tells the story of a young girl, named Alego, who goes clamdigging with her grandmother for the first time and, along the way, discovers all of the wonders of the seashore.

The opening of the collection at Iqaluit’s Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum is scheduled to start at 1 p.m. on Oct. 16.

Kamiapiit (Beautiful Boots), a lithograph by Ningeokuluk Teevee, is one of 36 prints contained in the 2010 Cape Dorset print collection which opens Oct. 16 at Iqaluit’s Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum. (IMAGE/ DORSET FINE ARTS)