Siassie Kenneally Napachie Sharky Ashevak Tunnillie

Siassie Kenneally (1969–2018)

Over the course of her career, visionary artist Siassie Kenneally from Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, produced an incredibly personal body of work that examined modern and traditional life from her own unique perspective. Kenneally’s drawings are a love song to her culture. The artist’s depictions of country foods—freshly harvested berries in a black plastic bag, hot stew overflowing with caribou meat in an enamel bowl, chipped around the edges, a flayed seal carcass sprinkled with fruit—are sumptuous and evocative.

Scenes of hunting, fishing, feasting and daily life are perhaps her most unique. Often rendered from above, her drawings appear almost abstract upon first glance and demand that viewers look closely to decipher a familiar scene from an unfamiliar angle. What originally appear to be strange groupings of geometric shapes slowly reveal themselves as a mug of tea, a sewing machine, a baseball cap or rocks in the snow. Kenneally made the familiar mysterious, the mundane exciting and the known unknown. Traditional clothing and tools were another favourite subject for the artist and her work regularly referenced her mother, Mayoreak Ashoona, RCA, also an accomplished graphic ar tist, carver and seamstress.

In 2017 Kenneally was the subject of a solo exhibition at Feheley Fine Arts and, later that year, a feature-length interview between Kenneally and Patricia Feheley titled “All of the Things that I Have Seen” was published in the Winter 2017 issue of the Inuit Art Quarterly. Each of her drawings is a careful recollection that encourages her viewers to look at the world, like she did, from a different perspective.

Napachie Sharky (1971–2018)

Napachie Sharky was a talented carver who created whimsical sculptural works that defied the limitations of stone. Born in Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, he is the brother of the well-known and widely collected artist Toonoo Sharky, RCA. As with many young artists, his early inspiration came from observing the work of respected elder artists. After losing his father and grandfather at a young age, Sharky learned important carving techniques from watching his stepfather, the famous stone sculptor Shorty Killiktee (1949–1993), work.

Unlike his stepfather, Sharky preferred to work in small scale. Inspired by his environment and the local Arctic wildlife, he made a niche for himself by carving graceful birds positioned in mid-motion and adorned with impossibly thin wings. “Sharky could dazzle with his meticulous and intricate handling of the stone,” says Patricia Feheley of Feheley Fine Arts. “The delicacy of the carving of the wings of a bird underlined their fragility in real life. I always felt that I should hold my breath when handling one of his sculptures.” Birds—whether a falcon, raven, bunting or ptarmigan—became Sharky’s signature subject.

He also enjoyed making small human figures undertaking daily activities, as in Man on ATV (2003) and Boy Standing Beside a House (2002), as well as playing sports and even rock climbing. Manager of Dorset Fine Arts John Westren recalls that every now and then Sharky “would amuse us with quirky and humorous figure carvings such as a man catapulted over a derailed snowmobile or a soccer player in the act of an acrobatic back kick.”

The artist’s carvings remain among the most sought after of the younger generation of artists from Kinngait. Sharky infused his work with a modern sensibility while still embracing traditional subject matter, a significant part of his broad appeal to collectors and undoubtedly an integral part of his legacy.

Ashevak Tunnillie (1956–2018)

Established Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, artist Ashevak Tunnillie grew up in the outpost camp of Aqiatulaulavik and began creating works in stone in 1982. Hailing from a family of established artists, his work was greatly influenced by his father Qavaroak (Kabubuwa) Tunnillie (1928–1993), who had a significant career carving large and intricate works of varying subject matter, as well as his mother Tayaraq Tunnillie (1934–2015). Tunnillie would watch his father work, then mimic his technique. He later involved his own family in the same way, his wife, Sileema, aiding in sanding sculptures and his son Pauloosie Tunnillie following in his father’s footsteps to become an accomplished artist himself. He eventually settled in Kinngait and only recently moved to Iqaluit, NU. Having lived on the land, he had a detailed knowledge of polar bears, a great advantage for an artist taking inspiration from his surroundings.

In his sculptures, Tunnillie concentrated on the form and mass of his subject, studying and visualizing his subject beforehand. His carvings possessed a well-crafted simplicity, foregoing fine detail and narrative for an overall clean line. Although he depicted many Arctic animals and some mythological imagery during his career, his name became most associated with his carvings of robust polar bears. These pieces were in great demand by collectors, and the subject of walking polar bears eventually dominated his body of work. “Aside from the sheer beauty of the lines and volumes in his carvings of prowling bears, I have always been struck by how well he captures, in stone, the act of sensing,” says

John Westren of Dorset Fine Arts. “His bears aren’t just standing or wandering around, Tunnillie had an ability to express bears that feel the ground they walk on and visibly seek and smell over a great distance.” Tunnillie will be remembered for his careful and meticulous carving, a reminder of the rewards of patient study.