Raised on the land at Cumberland Sound near Pangnirtung, Jackoposie Oopakak learned to carve early from his adoptive father, Oopakak. When he moved to Iqaluit in the 1970s to study jewellery making, this training gave further sharpness to an already gifted hand. Both jewellery and ivory carving demand confidence at a small scale, along with exactness, delicacy, and an instinct for how intricacy can be held together with grace.

This exacting sensibility is unmistakable here: every transition from one figure to the next has been handled with care, so that the composition feels intricate without ever turning crowded. While Oopakak uses the long sweep of the tusk as the essential armature for his composition, the work’s real strength lies in the way each form is locked into the next through his delicate undercutting, narrow intervals, and carefully preserved openings, which give the carving lift and clarity, allowing each animal and the human figure to register cleanly within the tall, ascending structure.

In this work, from the base upward, the carving rises like a crescendo. At its foundation, a bear braces itself against the stone base, solid and grounded, its weight giving the composition its opening note. Above, the hunter emerges within the upward sweep of the tusk, caught in a poised exchange with the fish held before him. From there, the composition begins to gather momentum. A whale rises above, with a walrus tucked within the curve of its fins. Above that, a seal arcs overhead, crowned by a bird that bears a narwhal on its back. The narwhal, in turn, supports another seal along the line of its tusk, and at the summit a long-necked goose or swan bends forward in a near genuflection, serving as the finial element. Each figure draws the eye higher through a sequence of lifts, bends, and delicate counterbalances.

What is most striking is the rhythm of it all. Without the bear at the base, the composition would have no clear point of departure. From that grounded beginning, no figure feels isolated, nor does any merely rest upon another. Each responds to the last in a carefully orchestrated progression, so that by the time the eye reaches the uppermost bird, the whole composition has risen to its highest register: the final clear note in a sculptural symphony of ascent. Beautiful.