John Kavik was born near Gjoa Haven in 1897 and spent much of his life in the interior country between Baker Lake and Cambridge Bay. In the late 1950s, starvation forced his relocation. He arrived first in Baker Lake and then, in 1958, in Rankin Inlet. Too frail for the physical demands of the nickel mine, Kavik turned to carving in 1960. What began as a necessity became a lifelong pursuit, and remarkably, he continued to create art well into his nineties.

In Mother and Child, made when the artist was in his 70s, mass and tenderness are fused within a single form. The mother’s body is carved as a compact block, her torso leaning slightly forward so that the whole figure seems to press into the space around it. Her ample hood extends from the nape of her neck in a voluminous arc, from which a child, eyes round and mouth parted, just presses into view. The rest of the mother’s form is defined by decisive cuts that establish the features, then softened through careful modelling to suggest the swell of short limbs and the rounded forms of her body within her amautiq.

Kavik’s style is often described as “brutal” or “raw,” and Mother and Child demonstrates why such terms persist, revealing how his work unsettles the conventions of the Western canon. In this work, limbs, torso, and head merge into one continuous bulk so as to prioritize weight and presence of the mother over delicacy or refinement. Kavik’s tool marks, cuts, and other irregular textures in the stone remain visible as if to insist on the hand of the maker. What emerges is a sculpture that renders the human form with profound solidity and a stark immediacy. Lovely.

MBL

References: For the section on John Kavik in Norman Zepp, Pure Vision: The Keewatin Spirit, (Regina: Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery, 1986), see pages 108-119. For an appreciation of the artist and his work see Stanley Zazelenchuk, “Kavik: The Man and the Artist” in Arts & Culture of the North, (Vol. IV, No. 2 Spring 1980), pp. 219-221. Masterpieces by Kavik are widely published; see George Swinton, Sculpture of the Inuit (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1972/92); Canadian Eskimo Arts Council, Sculpture/Inuit (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971).