LUCY TASSEOR TUTSWEETOK (1934-2012) ARVIAT (ESKIMO POINT)
Mother with Two Children, 1980
stone, 12 x 9.5 x 7.25 in (30.5 x 24.1 x 18.4 cm)
unsigned.

ESTIMATE: $10,000 — $15,000

Provenance
With Isaacs/Innuit Gallery, Toronto; Collection of John and Joyce Price, Seattle.

Exhibited
Isaacs/Innuit Gallery, Toronto, Arviat: Sculpture by Mark Alikaswa, George Arlook, Joy Hallauk, Elizabeth Nataraloo, Lucy Tasseor and others, April 4 – May 13, 1998; this work was the invitation image.

In reviewing the literature on Lucy Tasseor, we feel that these thoughts seem particularly apt in describing how we feel about this sculpture, one of her greatest masterpieces.

Something that remained consistent in Tasseor’s work right to the end of her career was a feeling of monumentality. Many works, especially larger ones, seem quite literally to be ‘monuments.’ Her sculptures, both the great ones and the more ordinary carvings, have a truly monolithic quality. Whether miniature or fist-sized or relatively large, they speak not only of family and community but also of hardness and resilience, of stone-ness. Instead of a frontispiece, the 1982 WAG catalogue Eskimo Point/Arviat offers this remarkable little poem by Tasseor:
My hands turn to stone
My feet turn to stone
I turn to stone
All of Me. [1]

Mother and Two Children feels even more monumental than its already considerable size. The sculpture’s almost awesome strength derives partly from the large scale of the quite clearly defined figures themselves – especially that of the mother – but also from the powerful treatment of the forms. As we move around the work it truly feels as if it has been hewn out of a mountain. The great majority of Tasseor’s works depict multiple heads and faces; only some of her earliest works are what we would think of as truly figural; many late works show one or two individuals, but in very low relief. In Mother and Two Children, we feel the fortitude (and perhaps the frustration) of a mother who struggles to hold on to her rambunctious children. The solidity – the “stone-ness” – of the work is thus countered by the equally powerful forces of vitality and humanity. Although Tasseor’s work is most often compared to Pangnark’s, here we would suggest a closer affinity to the work of Elizabeth Nutaraaluk (Lot 69). A stupendous achievement.

1. Bernadette Driscoll, Eskimo Point/Arviat (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery), 1982. Reproduced in Ingo Hessel, “I Turn to Stone” in Lucy Tasseor: I Turn to Stone (Toronto: Feheley Fine Arts, 2015), exh. cat.