The great majority of Andy Miki’s sculptures were carved in stone, with relatively few made from caribou antler (see Lot 114 for a wonderful example). Even rarer are works combining the two materials. This marvelous and endearing Caribou from c. 1975 seems to us to be a reprise of Miki’s impressive Caribou Head from about a decade earlier, in the Vancouver Art Gallery collection. [1] Though considerably smaller than that sculpture, it feels more robust and looks more rugged in form and execution. Also, Caribou is not a “tabletop” sculpture but begs to be held on one’s hand. It leaves no guesswork as to the type of animal it portrays (unlike so many of Miki’s highly abstracted creations). The charmingly rudimentary antlers are, of course, a dead giveaway.

1. See Norman Zepp, Pure Vision (1986), cat. 4, pp. 34, 65; also illustrated in Canadian Eskimo Arts Council, Sculpture/Inuit (1971), cat. 147.