The composition of A Shaman’s Helping Spirits is held in a state of remarkable order. At its centre sits a monumental horned figure, shown frontally, broad across the shoulders and firmly planted, its near-symmetry giving the image a clear sense of authority. Printed by Thomas Sivuraq in largely flat, primary colours, the design is built on an internal structure that almost reads like scaffolding: horns, head, shoulders, and bowed arms form a commanding upper register, while the widely splayed legs lock the figure into the sheet below. Around these stable forms, the fine repeated fringe lines that edge the body and clothing set up a gentle visual quiver, so that the figure seems to vibrate and never lapse into heaviness.

Distributed across this central figure, and illustrated with exquisite care, are the helping spirits themselves, who perch on the shaman’s shoulders and knees and gather across the torso. Atop the head, between the great yellow horns, stands a tiny figure which, as Jean Blodgett observed, “Certainly [...] represents a spirit or the shaman’s other persona” [1]. Taken altogether, Oonark’s image resolves into a beautifully ordered vision of the shaman as the point at which animal, human, and spirit worlds meet and hold in balance.

1. Blodgett, Grasp Tight the Old Ways: Selections from the Klamer Family Collection of Inuit Art, 1983, p. 54

References: This print is reproduced in Marie Francoise Guedon, et. al., Shamans and Spirits: Myths and Medical Symbolism in Eskimo Art, (Ottawa: National Museum of Man / The Canadian Arctic Producers, 1977), cat. no. 2, unpaginated. The show travelled in the USA, where it was reproduced in several newspaper articles advertising the show, including The Minneapolis Star, 26 Feb 1976; The Times-Picayune (New Orleans, Louisiana), 2 Dec 1973, The Los Angeles Times, 10 Feb 1981; and Arizona Republic, 6 May 1987 and 8 May 1987. 

 It has also been reproduced in Jean Blodgett, Grasp Tight the Old Ways: Selections from the Klamer Family Collection of Inuit Art, (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1983), cat. 19, p. 56; Carol Finley, Art of the Far North: Inuit Sculpture, Drawing, and Printmaking, (Minneapolis: Lerner Publications, 1998), fig. 9, p. 39. Robert Enright, “The Art of Jessie Oonark, Ceremonies of Innocence”, Inuit Art Quarterly, Winter 1987, 3; Janet Catherine Berlo and Ruth B. Phillips, Native North American Art, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), fig. no. 111, p. 165; Ingo Hessel, Arctic Spirit: Inuit Art from the Albrecht Collection at the Heard Museum, (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre / Phoenix: Heard Museum, 2006), cat. 165, p. 198. 

The drawing is reproduced in Jean Blodgett, The Coming and Going of the Shaman: Eskimo Shamanism and Art, (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1979), cat. 11, p. 21.

ND