After almost 40 years, world’s hub for Inuit ceramics might close

Inuit art is very stone-centric, says Pierre Aupilardjuk, who is a carver himself. There are prints, drawings and jewelry made by Inuit, but polar bears, walruses and enchanted owls carved from soapstone are still the most ubiquitous cultural creations.

Aupilardjuk works with a material he said is much more “forgiving” than soapstone — clay.

He’s worked in the studio of Rankin Inlet’s Matchbox Gallery since 1992 as one of its first local artists.

The Matchbox Gallery is currently the only gallery and studio space for Inuit ceramics in the world, said Sandra Nichol, who has been the gallery’s curator for the past 16 years.

Sandra Nichol, left, and Pierre Aupilardjuk stand in the Matchbox Gallery in Rankin Inlet. (Photo by Arty Sarkisian)

But the gallery’s future is uncertain as its owners grow older.

Matchbox Gallery is located in a former public housing unit in Rankin Inlet. It’s a small burgundy bungalow, with four rooms filled with finished and unfinished works of art.

It’s called Matchbox after the nickname given by locals to those old public houses. When such a “matchbox” catches fire, Nichol said, it burns to the ground in a half hour.

The Matchbox Gallery introduced Inuit to ceramics in the 1990s, after thousands of years of absolute soapstone dominance in the region.

Some fragments of 3,500-year-old ceramic pottery with Paleo-Eskimo origins were found in the northern Yukon region, according to the gallery’s supporting materials, but that was it for Inuit ceramics until late in the 20^th century.

In 1979, Jim and Sue Shirley, a husband-and-wife team of artists from New York, landed in Rankin Inlet. Jim was hired by the Government of Northwest Territories as an arts and crafts development officer.

The program he ran created a space for Inuit, most of them workers at the local nickel mine, to make and sell their art in Rankin Inlet.

But government support for the local arts was slowly fading and in the 1980s the Shirleys decided to start their own program focused on ceramics.

They opened the Matchbox Gallery in 1987, selling and showcasing Inuit art. The ceramics program launched a few years later in 1991.

There had been previous attempts to introduce ceramics to Rankin Inlet but they were unsuccessful, Nichol said.

The Shirleys started leading workshops to teach local artists how to work with clay. One of those local artists was Aupilardjuk.

“Jim taught me how to do it,” Aupilardjuk said, while working on a new piece of pottery. “The first thing I made collapsed. I was too rough.”

Pierre Aupilardjuk works on a small walrus figure as part of a pottery composition. (Photo by Arty Sarkisian)

He was an experienced carver by then and not used to working with clay.

Over the years, around 40 artists got “carried away by this,” Nichol said, working with clay from Alberta because Nunavut clay is too gritty.

Pottery from the Matchbox Gallery has been exhibited in galleries across Canada and around the world. Some is permanently displayed at the Nunavut legislative assembly in Iqaluit.

Now there are only two artists who occasionally come to the gallery to make art. Jim and Sue Shirley are in their 80s and have been less and less involved in recent years.

This means the gallery will likely have to close in the near future, Nichol said.

“It’s just a matter of when they’re ready to let go of what’s been in their lifeline for so many years,” Nichol said of the Shirleys.

She said local artists don’t feel like they should create their own workspace to continue the newly established tradition of Inuit ceramics while the Matchbox Gallery still exists.

That’s out of respect for Jim and Sue Shirley, Nichol added.

“I want to keep going,” Aupilardjuk said, adding he knows how to start his own production but chooses not to.