Lessons of the loom

PATRICIA D’SOUZA

Maria Etuangat was just 12 years old when she first started weaving. She learned the basics by watching her mother, Iga, one of the celebrated weavers at the Pangnirtung Tapestry Studio.

“I would take one colour and weave it around and around,” says Etuangat, now 21.

She weaves blue sky behind a brown inuksuk, laughing as she recalls her first attempt at the craft.

Hoping to follow in her mother’s footsteps, Etuangat is one of 10 students who began a unique textiles program in Pangnirtung last month, the first of its kind provided by Nunavut Arctic College.

The students line benches set up in a corner of the tapestry studio holding small metal looms in front of them. The pattern for their assignment is drawn on the vertical strings, forming a narrow piece made up of different shapes and colours.

It’s not an easy task — even for this talented group of women, many of whom are accomplished sewers.

One woman raises her hand and calls out to Murray Gibson, a professional tapestry artist recruited to teach the course.

Gibson arrived in the community a little more than a month ago from his home in Tennessee in the south-eastern United States.

He makes his way to the bench and leans into the loom, explaining with his hands the technique the woman is having trouble with.

“There is a whole generation of young women with tremendous skills. They were trained from the back of the amauti, practically,” he says.

“What I’m here to help them do is not just get technical training, but training in the process of making art.”

Part of that process involves teaching the women to think differently. One of their first projects, called “Baby it’s cold outside,” is to make clothing for a wild animal — say, a hat for a narwhal or a sweater for an Arctic char.

“The students on a personal level think I’m crazy,” Gibson says. “We’re taking the skills they know and applying them to something non-practical.”

But, he explains, the lesson is in creating something that has value simply in its artistic appeal — not necessarily in its usefulness. “It’s a balance between getting into the workforce and having a vision beyond production work.”

To that end, the program is structured to prepare students for the real world and the world of their imaginations. The tapestry course is the foundation of the program, and takes place every morning in the studio. Each afternoon, students head to the Arctic College community learning centre for courses ranging from business, math, Inuktitut, drawing and textile construction.

“The business classes are oriented to starting a business based on artwork,” says Naomi Alivaktuk. Students learn how to create a résumé specifically for artists.

Art history is also part of the curriculum, however the college is trying to find someone to teach it in Inuktitut. “Inuit history is art history,” Gibson says.

A professional tapestry artist for 17 years, Gibson is a skilled weaver, but speaks no Inuktitut. He faced an immediate language barrier when the program began and has relied on demonstrations and bilingual students to act as interpreters.

In that sense, the program has been as much of a learning experience for him as it has been for his students.

“[Taking the program] was a tremendously brave step on their part,” he says. “They’re busy with families, rushing back and forth to daycare. I’m really in admiration of them.”

Gibson, who grew up in Victoria, British Columbia, left his family in Tennessee, where his wife is an art history professor. “I used to live on a mountain in a forest and now I’m living among mountains, with not a tree in sight.”

The new surroundings may contribute to his art. Gibson brought along work he was commissioned to do, but he doesn’t know when he’ll find time to do it.

The success of the program — there was a waiting list for spots — and the challenge of creating something new have absorbed much of his time.

The students will graduate in May with skills that will allow them to join weavers employed by the Uqqurmiut Centre for Arts and Crafts, which runs the tapestry studio — if there’s room for them.

The 10 full-time weavers in the studio have been paid an hourly wage for their work since January, after the legislative assembly commissioned the giant tapestry that now hangs in the lobby of the legislative building in Iqaluit.

But according to Peter Wilson, general manager of the centre, if projects like the giant tapestry don’t continue, there may be little work for weavers in Pangnirtung in the future.

At the same time, the centre relies on the creation of a new generation of weavers so that it can continue the work that has made the tapestry studio internationally renowned.

The greatest contribution of the textiles program, Wilson says, is that it is encouraging new weavers to be independent artists. “They have been production workers until now,” he says.

If in the future weavers at the studio can manage their own careers, such as successful printmakers Andrew Qappik and Jolly Attagoyak, he says, they will have promising careers.

While the 10 students in the corner of the studio probably have visions of what their future careers will be like, they’re not anxious to talk about it.

Right now, they’re caught up in the moment. They’re creating their first tapestries.

“I used to dream of making my own. This is my first,” says Jeannie Shamaiyuk.

That’s enough for now.