To stay out of jail, this Nunavut carver makes art

Kellypalik said he doesn’t know what any carving is going to look like until the material shows him. This piece became a mask with a seal. (PHOTO BY THOMAS ROHNER)

Kellypalik makes a pipe out of marble. These he can sell to Inuit, whereas animal carvings he usually sells only to non-Inuit. (PHOTO BY THOMAS ROHNER)

Kellypalik said he once read a book about Inuit shaman masks, his inspiration for these carvings. It’s not just non-Inuit but also Inuit who buy his mask carvings, because they’re unique, he said. (PHOTO BY THOMAS ROHNER)

Cape Dorset carver Kudlu Kellypalik, 34, used to go door-to-door stealing from community members.

But now, the artist, who has had more stints in prison than he can remember, goes door-to-door every night selling his art, mostly carvings.

“I’m talking to you because I want people to know you can change,” Kellypalik told Nunatsiaq News as we followed him on his nightly walk Nov. 26, a mild overcast night in the south Baffin community.

“Everybody sees me with a label across my chest: criminal, someone who steals. Maybe now 20 per cent of the community knows that I’m trying. If I wasn’t a changed man I wouldn’t be talking to you like this. I’d ask you, ‘why are you asking me all these fucking questions?’ But I’m a changed man,” Kellypalik said as we walked across Cape Dorset, snow crunching underfoot.

Kellypalik said he cleaned up his act over a year ago. That’s when he started dating a girl he had been in love with for years. He wanted to propose to her, but not until he changed his criminal ways.

The carver said his shortest stint in prison was one month and his longest was nearly four years in a maximum security prison.

Kellypalik said he has zero recollection of the “serious crime” that landed him that sentence, because he was blacked out on alcohol.

“I wouldn’t have been in max security if I hadn’t assaulted a guard,” he said.

Kellypalik didn’t want to name the crime or facility out of fear for his personal safety if he ends up back in jail.

But even while in prison, Kellypalik’s carvings were popular.

“One guy asked me to carve a full chess set out of two different colours of soap,” he said.

For that work, Kellypalik said he was paid with two cartons of cigarettes, with each cigarette being worth $10 in prison.

“You could get whatever contraband you wanted in jail. Any drug there is outside, you could get inside. The guards would bring it in to sell.”

After he was released from a federal prison in 2004, Kellypalik said he spent two years in Ottawa, avoiding Nunavut for fear of falling back into the criminal life.

That’s exactly what happened when he did return to attend an uncle’s funeral.

But for more than a year now, Kellypalik has lived a crime-free life.

Back at his brother’s house on Nov. 26, where he sleeps and carves, Kellypalik showed his considerable knowledge of carving.

For example, you have to be careful when carving in white marble if it’s “really sparkly,” because that means the marble is brittle.

Holes in the marble means it came into contact with salt, while grey streaks mean the marble was underground, Kellypalik said.

But the carver said he uses soapstone and whale bones more often than marble.

He started carving when he was 13 and was taught by his older brother, Kellypalik said.

That brother is one of two that Kellypalik lives with in a one-bedroom house in Cape Dorset.

“We look out for each other, you know. A lot of brothers here fight, but we help each other,” said the brother, who did not want to be named.

It’s Kellypalik’s younger brother, though, who owns the house the three brothers live in.

And Kellypalik is under considerable pressure to sell his carvings every single day in the community of 1,300, depending mostly on non-Inuit customers who either live in or visit Cape Dorset.

That’s because in order to keep a roof over his head and a bed to sleep in, Kellypalik said he has to give his younger brother something every day—either “money, dope or something to eat.”

Still, it’s a much better living situation than Kellypalik said he had growing up.

Both his biological and then step-parents would take his money from selling carvings all the time.

And Kellypalik, who has never owned a bank card because he doesn’t trust banks, said he has a lot of bad memories from growing up.

Like when his mother told him she wished he would commit suicide.

Or when, at 11 years old, he saw his older brother get shot and killed right in front of him.

“I still see my brother getting shot like it was yesterday,” he said.

But Kellypalik said he has gotten a lot of help from people in the community over the past year. Social workers, teachers and nurses are all counsellors to him, as far as Kellypalik is concerned.

“They say they’re not counsellors, but to me they are because I can talk to them when I’m really stressed out,” he said.

And Kellypalik has carving, which is both a “hobby and a day job,” he said.

Still, if he could live outside of Nunavut with his siblings and work as a carver, he would.

“It’s painful to live here because most people think I’m a bad person. They don’t see that I’m trying and changing.”

If you are interested in Kellypalik’s art, you can find him on Facebook as “Kudlu K” or email him at mrkellypalik@hotmail.com.