Cape Dorset prints hit galleries

The annual print collection from Cape Dorset is opening next weekend at Iqaluit’s Sunakkutaangit Musuem and in galleries across North America and Europe.

Since 1959, this collection has presented the finest work of Cape Dorset’s graphic artists, both young and old, who work together in the West Baffin Cooperative.

The 2005 print collection includes 32 images by 12 artists. Renowned artists like Kenojuak Ashevak, Kananginak Pootoogook and Pitaloosie Saila are represented, along with newer artists, like Annie Pootoogook, 36, who began drawing in 1997.

Pootoogook’s father, Eegyvadluq, was a talented carver and one of the first stonecut printmakers in Cape Dorset. Her mother, Napachie, was a long-time contributor to the annual print collections. Her grandmother, Pitseolak Ashoona, was one of the first to experiment with the new medium of drawing. Pitseolak went on to become a respected graphic artist.

Pootoogook has been represented in four commercial exhibitions since 2002, and she’s attracted the attention of the prestigious Power Plant Gallery in Toronto, where she will have a solo exhibition in the fall of 2006. This year’s collection includes Pootoogook’s quirky print, called “Briefcase.”

The cost of prints in the 2005 collection runs from $650 to $1,000, with the most expensive work by Kenojuak Ashevak, called “Resplendent Owls.”

Ashevak is one of Canada’s most acclaimed and honoured graphic artists. “Her long list of achievements and honours is surpassed only by her stamina and good humour,” says the Cape Dorset Fine Arts web site.

The humourous “Parliament of Owls” by Kananginak Pootoogook is also included in this year’s collection. Kananginak has been involved with drawing and printmaking since the late 1950s when the West Baffin Co-operative first started up in Cape Dorset. His first print, a collaborative image with his father, Pootoogook, was included in the first catalogued collection of Cape Dorset prints in 1959. Since that time, Kananginak’s work has been included in almost every annual collection. This year’s collection includes six of his works.

The 2005 Cape Dorset Annual Print Collection opens Oct. 22 at 1 p.m. in the Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum in Iqaluit.