Helen Kalvak cm, rca
1901–1984 Ulukhaktok, NT
I started making art when I was very young, maybe two years old. I learned from my grandmother Helen Kalvak. She made drawings, prints and wall hangings from sealskin. She used to tell me stories and then ask me to draw them. I would put them down on paper: a scene of a hunt, or travellers or animals and birds on the land or in the ocean. We would make drawings together. My mother, Elsie Nilgak, and my grandmother told me that making artwork was going to help me provide for my family. That is very true for me today. I make carvings, crafts and prints, mainly stencils and etchings. Everything that I have done with my artwork is mainly what my grandmother and mother taught me. To this day, I still use the same patterns and techniques that I learned from them. I use materials I find out on the land to dye my own textiles because it is very costly to import dyes and other finished materials. Being raised in and living in Ulukhaktok my entire life, I try to use the traditional knowledge that I was taught. –