a tutor, and she asked Bob to take her to his carving studio so she could make the tutor a gift. She told him to leave while she worked, made him stay out of the studio for two days. When he was finally allowed back in, she showed him a sculpture in stone, an Inuk man creeping out from behind a stone blind with a bow and arrow, shooting at a carved bird. Bob was delighted. “I used to carve long ago,” Goota says. “I didn’t want anyone to find out until I was ready. I was just trying to prove to him that I could do it.” She goes on to explain that she’s too shy to promote her own work for herself. For the past 15 years, Bob has promoted her work, and the work of the family. “The real joy in all this is watching my wife work,” he says. Both Bob and Goota love to carve the weathered whalebone they find washed up on beaches in the high arctic. Goota finds the bones’ inherent shapes inspire her. “There’s something in there you can see,” she explains. As a carver works on whalebone, dust coats the skin and permeates clothing. Bob finds as he carves he contemplates the fact that he’s working intimately with the remains of an enormous animal, one that lived at least half a century ago. Goota has mastered this material — her family has carved whalebone for more than 50 years. The earliest documented piece was a doll’s face created by
50 Galleries West Spring 2009
Kiawak Ashoona in 1959 and presented to the Queen. The economy of working with whalebone follows the seasonal calendar. For years, the family carved over the winter and hoped to sell enough to offset the high costs of summer bone gathering along the northern coast. Beachcombing in the Arctic with family and friends has been one of the highlights of Bob’s life. Back in the studio, they begin carving, and the cycle continues. Each time the Nunavut land claims officers visited Yellowknife, the family double checked to ensure they were following proper protocols gathering whalebone. In the summer of 2006, the cycle hit a blip. That summer, Bob and Joe collected whalebone together along the coast of the Arctic Ocean. When they applied for the permits to take the whalebone home, the Nunavut government denied them under legislation meant to protect archaeological sites. Bob explains that there aren’t many places to camp along the shores of the Arctic Ocean, and so anywhere you set up a camp, odds are good someone camped there before you. The family shot video of the ancient encampments they found along the way, collecting whalebone without disturbing the archaeological value of the sites. Over a year later, the government finally determined the carvers had broken the rule, but chose not press charges. They didn’t give the whalebones back. The next summer Goota, a Nunavut beneficiary, went on a similar gathering expedition. She didn’t have a problem bringing the bones back. The incident emphasized a tight spot Bob has sometimes found himself in since he began his art practice in Yellowknife. He’s a Ukrainian descendent making art that looks Inuit. “Most Inuit carvers get what I’m doing, but some don’t,” he says. Bob’s work is profoundly influenced by the Inuit culture he’s married into. It’s also original and totally his own. Last summer, Bob joined Julien Feingold, a 93-year-old collector from California, on what turned into a bone-hunting trip to the Queen Charlotte Islands. As the two men explored galleries and studios, they met Fred Watmaugh, a marine scrimshaw artist and coral carver. He suggested they visit Betty and Neil Carey. When she was in her 20s, Betty Carey carved a log into a rowboat and rowed from Seattle to Ketchikan, Alaska. Now well into their 80s, the Careys have been beachcombing on Haida Gwaii for four decades. www.gallerieswest.ca