A difficult trip to Russia

GREG YOUNGER-LEWIS

In a way, Paul Machnik found Siberia while in Nunavut.

The 52-year-old Montreal artist recently went across the Bering Straight to the northeast corner of Russia’s rolling tundra to teach a village of people often called “Eskimos” how to make prints.

Everything looked promising. The project was sponsored by, among others, the federal government and one of Cape Dorset’s best known artists, and had Siberian backers as well.

For Machnik, the Siberian trip was a flashback to three years ago, when he spent six months doing the same in most communities in the Baffin region.

Except, there was one major difference – Nunavut never labelled Machnik a “terrorist” for his efforts.

“They ordered us off the helicopter we were going to take, and left us in the middle of nowhere,” Machnik recalled of his surprise confrontation with Russian authorities in early November.

“They seem to make up the rules as they go along.”

The name-calling caused a huge delay in the project’s delivery. Instead of travelling for a week, Machnik and his partner, Bess Muhlstock, counted 33 days in transit.

Meanwhile, a small community of Chukchen and Yup’ik Eskimo hunters and carvers living in matchbox houses waited anxiously for them to arrive. They knew Machnik’s printmaking could be their only means of making any money, since a wide-spread ban on the ivory trade in North America and Europe has destroyed their livelihood carving walrus tusks.

Unfortunately, local authorities were less eager for Machnik to reach his destination.

The billionaire governor of Chukotka, the territory they were visiting, decided at the last minute to cancel the free flights he had promised.

Then Machnik arrived via an expensive charter only to be labelled an enemy of the state. Russian airport authorities told him that they were missing the proper paperwork from a local bureaucrat they needed to load up their printing press and get in a helicopter for the last leg of their trip.

But Machnik said the final blow came once he took another expensive chartered helicopter and reached Uelen, the village of hunters and carvers where he was supposed to give printmaking workshops.

Thousands of dollars’ worth of nitric acid needed to engrave the printmaking plates went missing en route.

Essentially, Machnik got all the way there, only to find that he lacked the tools to do anything.

But a local hunter knew better than to quit. Machnik said he and some other carvers used the same “Inuit know-how” that he’d encountered while working at the artists’ co-op in Cape Dorset.

The hunter brought in a towel soaked in sea water and laid it over the print plate. Then he connected a motorcycle battery to each side of the plate. The electrical current, called reverse electrolysis, melted the wax covering the plate in such a way that they were left with a print template.

Then, some carvers also chipped in, showing Machnik an old technique they knew from their scrimshaw carving. They took discarded aluminum roofing from Canadian-made houses in their village and etched their designs into the metal. Artists mainly drew polar bears, reindeer, walrus and whale.

In the end, Machnik said the trip was worth it because artists found a new way of earning money, and expressing themselves.

“We were there as guides,” he said. “We were not there to tell them what to do.”

Machnik gave special thanks to Kenojuak Ashevak, one of Nunavut’s most esteemed artists, for making the project possible. With permission from the West Baffin Eskimo Co-op, Ashevak donated about 50 prints for fundraising, and gifts for artists in Uelen.

Machnik also paid homage to other communities he visited during his printmaking workshop tour of Baffin Island in 2001.

Machnik said he learned a lot about traditional Inuit culture while touring Arctic Bay, Clyde River, Hall Beach, Igloolik, Kimmirut, Qikiqtarjuak and Pond Inlet.

And those communities seemed to have a lot in common with the Chukchi and Yup’ik Eskimo in Siberia, he said, especially when it came to pride in independence, and the importance of sharing country food.

The Chukchi are originally a reindeer-herding people, but have relied more on hunting walrus and whale near Uelen since the reindeer herds disappeared. The Yup’ik hunt mainly marine mammals. Both still use dog teams.

Machnik left a printing press for artists to use in Uelen, but admits he’s not sure how successful they will be, in part, because the donated equipment is sub-par.

He said the artists will most likely succeed, if they follow Cape Dorset’s example of producing unique artwork, instead of making endless images of the same animals.