Cape Dorset Prints: A Retrospective Fifty Years of Printmaking at the Kinngait Studio by Leslie Boyd Ryan
square 8vo. pp. 304. profusely illustrated. index. hardcover cloth. dw. (fine - some light wear to dw.). San Francisco: Pomegranate Books, [2007].
ISBN-10: 0764941917 / ISBN-13: 9780764941917
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Since the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative was formed in Cape Dorset in 1959, The artists of this Baffin Island community have made over one hundred thousand original drawings and thousands of limited edition prints. The original catalyst for this artistic outpouring was a government program designed to encourage the productin and sale of Inuit handicrafts. Cape Dorset prints: is the first book to tell the story of the Kinngait Studio's fifty-year history, through thirteen essays by the artists, visiting artists, and art historians, and Co-op founders. With their images of the many species of Artic wildlife, shamans, hunters, and traditional camp life, the Cape Dorset graphic artists convey the mystique of Canada's far north. Using stonecut, engraving, lithography, and other printmaking media, these images speak eloquently of the natural rhythms of the Artic environment, narrating not only the interplay between species but also the growing modernization of the Cape Dorset community.