Cape Dorset, Nunavut

  

Cape Dorset, Nunavut, Canada is a community of about 1200 people.  It is located on Dorset Island, just off the coast of the Foxe Penninsula in the southwest corner of Baffin Island in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut.  The community is called “Kinngait”  (pronounced king-ite) meaning "the place of hills" by its Inuit inhabitants.  It is the home of the Kinngait Print studio for over 50 years.

Since the 1950’s, Cape Dorset, which calls itself the “Capital of Inuit Art” has been a centre for drawing, printmaking, and carving.  Even today printmaking and carving are the community’s main economic activities.  Each year, in October, the Kinngait Studio issues an annual print collection.  Cape Dorset has been hailed as the most artistic community in Canada, with some 22% of the labour force employed in the arts.
In 1957, James Houston, a Canadian, created a graphic arts workshop in Cape Dorset.  Houston collected drawings from community artists and encouraged local Inuit stone carvers to apply their skills to stone-block printing.  The print program was modeled after Japanese ukiyo-e workshops.  Other cooperative print shops were also established in nearby communities, but the Cape Dorset workshop has remained the most successful.  They have experimented with etching, engraving, lithography, and silkscreen and produce annual catalogs advertising the limited edition prints.  Between the years of 1959 and 1974, Cape Dorset artists produced more than 48,000 prints.  Well-known artists of Cape Dorset include Pudlo Pudlat, Kananginak Pootoogook, and  Kenojuak Ashevak. Ashevak’s drawings of owls have appeared on Canadian stamps as well as a Canadian quarter coin.  

  Her iconic print “The Enchanted Owl 1960” now stands as the highest auction price achieved for a print by a Canadian-born artist which sold for $58,000 in a Waddington’s auction in 2002.    

“The co-op has always had a positive effect on the community of Cape Dorset. The arts have kept the community alive.  The prints tell stories of the unique way of life for the Inuit and how they have been able to survive in the cold harsh arctic.
Today the Co-op is even more important than it was in 1950. It functions independently and its members take good care of it. A new generation of artists is receiving patronage dividends from the Co-op."