Typical of the ambitious early sculpture produced at Inukjuak during the period, this family group turns an intimate subject into a dense, intricately interlocked composition. A mother sits surrounded by her two children, their bodies pressed closely together as arms loop around shoulders, heads rise between adjoining forms, and small limbs slip across and behind larger ones, binding the family into a compact and lovely whole. For all the compression, however, each gesture remains distinct, giving the group a strong sense of tenderness and physical closeness.

Making full use of this large stone's substantial mass, much of the sculpture’s force comes from the pressure and weight the figures exert upon one another. Bodies press, brace, and support. The mother anchors the group, while the children gather tightly around her.

The dark stone is handled with as much attention to surface and finish as to mass. Smooth, substantial planes are set against fine incisions describing the mother’s neatly plaited hair, clothing, and facial features. Ivory inlay gives emphasis to her wide eyes and carefully picked teeth, while the babies’ round faces emerge from deeply carved hoods, their small eyes described in soap. Further soap-filled punctures and cuts scatter pale accents across the garments. Against the lustrously polished stone, these subtle touches give the faces a keen, animated presence.

A veritable boulder in its mass and solidity, Mother with Two Children begs to be communed with from all angles. Indeed, when viewed in the round, the group seems to continually rearrange itself. A face slips into view, an arm disappears behind a shoulder, another child emerges from the stone. The outline shifts from compact form to clustered bodies and back again. No single viewpoint contains the entire family. The figures fit and fold around one another so closely that they seem carved less as separate bodies than as one substantial, many-sided form, held together by pressure, touch and affection.

Sold more than a decade ago as attributed to Johnny Inukpuk, we remain somewhat unconvinced by the attribution [1]. In the end, however, the question of authorship matters less than the sculpture's own force. Its compact mass, tactile finish, and deeply felt sense of familial intimacy carry the work far beyond the need for a familiar name. The figures press, fold and settle into one another with such physical conviction that the group establishes its own authority, grounded in touch, weight, and the warmth of bodies held close in familial embrace.

1. A work so closely resembling the present example as to suggest the same hand, though slightly smaller, is illustrated in George Swinton, Sculpture of the Inuit, (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1992), ill. 19, p. 17.

Swinton writes, “In the carving (ill. 19) a Port Harrison artist, unknown to me, makes use of Johnnie Inukpuk’s personal form by shaping the large head with the small inlaid eyes in a style that became common in Port Harrison between 1952 and 1954” (op. cit.).

FA