LUCY TASSEOR TUTSWEETOK (1934-2012) ARVIAT (ESKIMO POINT)
Family Scene, 2001
stone, 17.5 x 14.5 x 11 in (44.5 x 36.8 x 27.9 cm)
signed,"ᓗᓯ".

Provenance
Private Collection, Ottawa.

As she entered her sixties, Tasseor and her husband Richard Tutsweetok began collecting medium-large size fieldstones on the land for her to carve. Their larger size, their mostly oval shapes, and their hardness necessitated the use of power tools and a more “economical” style of working the stone. Rather than working in high relief as she had done for decades, she invented a judicious and rather elegant method of working in very low relief with a grinder. The resulting faces and figures sometimes look as if they have been “drawn” onto the surface of the stone. Works such as Family Scene do not merely look monumental, they truly are very large and impressive. At their best, they are as poignant and powerful as many of her small masterpieces from earlier in her career.

References: For similar large, late period works by Tasseor see Inuit Gallery of Vancouver, Arviat: Arts of the Past Present and Future, (Vancouver: Inuit Gallery of Vancouver, 1997), cats. 26, 30, 44, 54; Walker’s Auctions, May 2017, Lot 217, and May 2016, Lot 50.