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Friday, April 25 • 2014
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Vol. 6 • Issue 86
See story on: Page 21
This week’s feature: e:
Leafs coach resigns
2014
VW Golff
President also leaving team
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Cool carvings City doles Columbia Basin Trust
Nelson’s John McKinnon took his know-how to Nunavut to help Inuit carvers replicate a series of iconic buildings in miniature
GREG NESTEROFF
I
SAM VAN SCHIE
Nelson Star Reporter
n a kind of reverse architecture, Inuit carvers have created scale models of existing Arctic buildings under the tutelage of Nelson’s John McKinnon. McKinnon, whose sculptures are featured prominently around town, has made many trips to the Arctic since the 1980s to teach stone carving techniques. But he hadn’t been back for a few years and was itching to return when the Nunavut Arts and Crafts Association asked him to visit two communities and help carvers create pieces commissioned by an architectural firm for a European exhibition. They called on McKinnon’s expertise in part because the subject matter wasn’t what Inuit carvers are used to: they rarely do buildings, much less from blueprints, much less to scale. “These guys carve bears out of stone, but never anything like this,” McKinnon says. “I’ve seen carvings of igloos, airplanes, skidoos and boats, but didn’t think buildings would entice them much.” In January, McKinnon went to Pangnirtung, on the east coast of Baffin Island, and in March to Arviat, near Rankin Inlet. He spent a week in each place with a mix of veteran and beginning carvers who were given plans of prominent Nunavut buildings — including schools, churches, hotels, and recreation centres — and asked to recreate them in miniature from soapstone. The building styles ranged from pre-fab to A-frame to “space-age looking stuff.” The rough carving was done outside in minus-30 degree weather — closer to minus-40 when the wind
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Nelson Star Reporter
Nelson’s John McKinnon was recently in Nunavut to help Inuit carvers including Jaco Ishulutaq on a project to create scale models of prominent Arctic buildings in Sarah McMahon photo soapstone. Their work will be exhibited in Venice in June. was blowing — but the hand-tool work and sanding was done indoors. McKinnon says the trick was getting the proportions right. “It was difficult for some of them and in a few cases there was a language barrier. It’s mostly the idea of doing straight lines.” Normally, he says, Inuit carvers let the stone’s shape dictate their subject and it’s not important that the finished product closely
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resemble its real-life counterpart. It’s also unusual for them to spend a full week on a single piece, but it allowed for a lot of detail. “That was nice actually, because we gave them time to perfect it. In the end they were really satisfied with what they’d made.” McKinnon was also pleased: “Some are quite nice. There are some Continued on Page 5
The City of Nelson dolled out about $126,000 in Columbia Basin Trust community initiative funding to 38 successful applicants at a council meeting Tuesday night. The largest sum went to the Nelson and District Chamber of Commerce, which received $22,000 — the full amount it applied for — to go towards work at the former CP Rail station that will help finish the new regional visitor gateway and business opportunity centre. The Nelson Regional Sports Council was awarded $10,000 towards hiring an artist to create a mural on the back wall of the Civic Arena. However, that was only one-third the amount originally requested by the group. The Chamber was the only organization seeking more than $6,000 that received full funding for its project. Kootenay Kids Society got $7,000 of the $10,000 it requested for fire safety upgrades on the heritage home it recently purchased on Stanley Street. And the Kootenay Literary Society was given $4,500 to put on the Elephant Mountain Literary Festival, though they asked for $8,000. Oxygen Art Centre got $5,500 for its 2014/15 residency and exhibition programming. Nelson District Arts Council received $5,000 for this summer’s ArtWalk and Nelson Electric Tramway Society was given $3,000 towards developing its streetcar museum. All three had initially sought $10,000 or more towards their projects. But with limited funds to go around, council had to decide between fully funding relatively few projects or giving partial funding to as many applications as they could. Generally council favoured the latter option, though there were a few smaller projects that were funded to the full amount requested, including Nelson District Youth Centre’s skatepark ambassador program ($5,000), Nelson Cycling Continued on Page 4
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