Soapstone, Bone and Skin

1 - The largest number of important and up-coming Inuit artists reside in the small community of Cape Dorset which is the largest locality of artists in all of Canada, as it relates to population: twenty-three percent of the population nearly twenty-five of the working residents, more than twenty-nine times the Canadian national norm.

2 - The appellation "Eskimo" is a term created and used by more southern, Indian, native Canadian tribes, meaning "eaters of raw flesh" to describe the Inuit, and is meant to be descriptive and not in any way derogatory.

3 - The Inuit artists and their helpers, pit-mine the stone quarry stone from which to create carvings in the winter and haul by dog sled back to their communities and work areas.

4 - Igloos are constructed with blocks of snow arranged in the same manner, using the same technique and principals of construction designed by the finest architects who developed the design concepts for the construction of the great domes on cathedrals constructed over the centuries throughout Europe.

5 - Seen in isolated locations in various places on the tundra, are lonely stone constructions in the form of a human being. These stone structures are called by their inuit name, Inukshuks, and were, according to legend, built to protect hunters, fishermen, and people migrating from one community to the other across the tundra, protect them, and point them to a safe way.

- It is thought that more than four thousand years of carving has brought Inuit art sculpture to the level of high artistry it enjoys today.

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"Stones, Bones and Stitches" makes the reader aware of arctic, Inuit Art in a in depth studied way. Featuring major pieces of sculpture by prominent Inuit Artists, art custodians for the McMichael museum, cover the Arctic art scene, the transformation of the north and continuing evolution of Inuit art and crafts.

Included in their discourse is an examination of eight selected works of sculpture and limited edition stone cut prints described in detail as to how they came to be, in the manner they were made, created, within the ways and forms and with the tools of the time of their creation. The discussion of each piece includes name and artistic ways of the artists presented their medium, location (arctic community), how their works relate to Inuit mythology (especially the Sedna, Goddess of the Sea) flora, fauna, including sea life, walrus, seals, caribou, polar bear and way of life. Images along with little-known facts offer interesting and important views into the artists' way of survival, habitat, and techniques as well as a short discussion of the territorial history.