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s t a n l e y • F a i r f i e l d • S h o sh o n e • P i c a b o Wood River High School Senior Erin Murphy talks about environmental pursuits and more
Taize Offers Mid-Week Reflections
the weekly
Page 6
Canfield Talks About The Black Keyes Page 8
ERC on Organic Recycling Ideas
read about it on PaGe 3
Page 11
J a n u a r y 4 , 2 0 1 2 • V o l . 5 • N o . 2 4 • w w w .T h e W e e k l y S u n . c o m
Bringing Life to Stone Page Klune’s Inuit Art Collection
PHOTOS & STORY BY KAREN BOSSICK
Y
ou might expect to see icebergs floating outside the window after a quick glance around Page Klune’s three-level home in Ketchum. Klune’s home is a virtual museum of Inuit art—from Cape Dorset prints dating back to 1959 to smooth green stone carvings indigenous to the Cape Dorset area and black stone carvings from the Baker Lake area. Klune, who has collected several hundred works, contributed nearly two dozen works for “Due North,” an exhibition showing at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts Hailey Center through Feb. 10. And she opens her home by appointment to private collectors interested in Inuit art and crafts, including baskets featuring baleen, moccasins and mittens. “It’s amazing what the Inuit can do with a piece of stone,” said Klune, picking up a piece that contains a woman’s face, walrus and bear in one piece. “I like the simplicity, the naturalness of it. It feels good and it tells the story of their life. ” Klune, a former fashion editor for a women’s magazine, was introduced to the frozen north—a stark landscape of rock and snow—by her late husband, a Montreal filmmaker. She’d venture there in July for a month at a time, eating Arctic char and seal, venturing out on a sled pulled by a Ski-Doo snowmobile and sleeping in tents in view of caribou. “I’d go up wearing layers of long underwear and other clothing and the children there would be wearing next to nothing,” recalled Klune. “They lived in prefab homes with crude tables and chairs. They didn’t have many belongings but they were tied to TV—everyone had a satellite dish sitting on top of their home. “The muktuk whale blubber they ate was awful. I’d get excited for peanut butter after that.” Art has always played a big part in Inuit society and continues to do so today as one of the people’s primary means of making a living, along with hunting. They’d quarry stone by hand, Klune said. Then they’d sit outside their homes carving sculptures that often depicted everyday activities, such as hunting, in soft stone such as soapstone and serpentinite, using nothing more than a knife and a file. “They said the stone or bone would talk to them. They’d feel the stone and see where it would lead them,” said Klune who staged her first show of Inuit art in 1982 at a California gallery—14 years before she moved to Sun Valley. Klune’s collection includes soapstone sculptures by such famed Inuit carvers as Abraham Anghik Ruben and David Rubin Piqtoukun. She also has prints by Pudio Pudlat. The late
“It’s amazing what the Inuit can do with a piece of stone. I like the simplicity, the naturalness of it. It feels good and it tells the story of their life.” –page klune
printmaker became fascinated with helicopters after seeing one for the first time during a visit to New York, she said, and often included them in his more traditional scenes of Inuit villages. Knowledge of Inuit art is increasing as more people take trips to the Arctic, said Klune. “They’re a very spiritual people,” she said. “They take that stone and give it life.”
see klune’s collection
You can see some of Page Klune’s Inuit artwork from 2 to 6 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts Hailey gallery at 314 Second Ave. S. Admission is free. To see more of her works, call Klune at 208-720-4745.
Page Klune shows off a sculpture with a surprising theme—an Inuit accordion player
“ They said the stone or bone would talk to them…
…they’d…see where it would lead them .”
Upbeat with Alasdair at 6:30 tonight
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un Valley Summer Symphony Conductor Alasdair Neale will discuss Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5—“a journey from darkness to light”—at 6:30 tonight at The Community Library in Ketchum. The event is free but attendees are encouraged to RSVP with the symphony office at 208-622-5607 or info@ svsummersymphony.org
Sun Valley Bridge Lessons Bridge BaSicS Wednesdays, 3-5 p.m. • Jan. 4 - March 28, 2012
poLiShing the BaSicS
Fridays, 3-5 p.m. • Jan. 6 - March 30, 2012
Bridge gameS for new pLayerS Tuesdays, 3-5:30 p.m. • through March 27, 2012
See detaiLS on page 3
Presented in cooperation with the American Contract Bridge League and the Bridge Club of the Wood River. www.sunvalleybridge.com www.acbl.org