Bryan Hellwig now has the last carving Pitseolak Qimirpik ever made encased in glass on his counter in the Northern Collectibles shop in Iqaluit.
The accompanying sign commemorates his friend, recently eulogized during a small ceremony in Kimmirut on Nov. 26.
Qimirpik, a well-known carver particularly fond of owls, died tragically while out searching for soapstone with his son Suati near his home community on Oct. 15. A subsequent search and rescue for the elder Qimirpik was undertaken, but he was not found.
Poignantly, his final owl carving has an unfinished face and sits in the arts shop where his friend Hellwig sold his work for the past two decades. It was Qimirpik’s wife, Natsivak, who sent the arts dealer the bird carving as a testament to the friendship between the two men.
“He was working on two, that’s the bigger one,” says Hellwig. “He was kind of short on stone at the time [of his death], that’s why he went out, to get more stone...”
Some speculate that Pitseolak — Pits as he was known to his friends — was coming back with a qajaq loaded with stone when he possibly struck ice in the Hudson Strait and his boat overturned. His son’s lifeless body was found immediately with the boat, but Qimirpik remains unrecovered.
“It didn’t feel real because there was no body,” says Natsivak, speaking to Nunavut News about the Nov. 26 memorial. “It was a little bit of closure, but not really. It was mainly for our grown children, so they can get closure and move on. But I know they won’t move on that quickly.”
Early life
Pitseolak had a connection to the owl.
“His mother had an owl as a little girl that was abandoned," says Natsivak. "She said the owl used to follow her everywhere, even when it learned to fly, it always came back. The mother used to tell [Pitseolak] the story about the owl when he was a little boy, so he started carving owls... His mother inspired him to start carving, and it just became his passion.”
Pitseolak grew up in Kimmirut and learned to carve as a young boy from both his parents. He started by sanding down his parents’ carvings, then when he was nearly a teenager, he began creating artwork of his own, according to his wife of more than 30 years. She also says he became the master carver he was from daily practice at a young age.
“He told me he first started with hand tools, like with a file and an axe, but after awhile he learned how to use electric tools,” she says.
Natsivak, who is originally from Kinngait, met Pitseolak, then 26, in 1992, when his father remarried a woman from the community. She says Pitseolak pursued her, and they eventually married and had seven children.
Rising career
Although Pitseolak lived and worked the vast majority of his life in Kimmirut, he did travel periodically for his artwork, including to Switzerland, Toronto and Montreal.
“Getting old... he didn’t really like to leave home,” says Natsivak. “But before we met, he travelled a lot.”
He was asked to come to Switzerland to showcase his work in a gallery in the mid-1990s. This, says Natsivak, really launched his career as a master carver. The arts community started demanding more of his art after that.
Carving, Natsivak says, was a means “just to survive and support his family... to pay bills. After work, he’d carve.”
Pitseolak worked on his carvings in a shack beside their house, but would buy and sell art in Kimmirut’s port. His output at this point became prolific.
Besides carving, Pitseolak also worked various odd jobs in his home community, from being hired at the local Co-op for many years to driving a garbage truck to filling a role in the fishing industry.
Legacy
Her husband's art is very separate from who he was as a man, according to Natsivak.
“Like any other couple, we had our ups and downs,” she admits. “He was a very loving father. He had my boys out to hunt... and he taught my son Suati how to carve... he was my firstborn.”
Their son Brendan is also learning to carve, and according to his mother, is getting good at the craft.
“Suati was following in his footsteps, and now his son Brendan,” says Hellwig. “I’m hoping he keeps with it.
"Pits' carvings were in demand, especially his owls, eagles, and fish..." he continues. "They're just beautiful carvings. Everybody just always wants them... He does — he did — fabulous work... buyers in the south were always asking for his owls. He put a lot of work into those owls. They weren't rush jobs. It would take him days to get one done, depending on the size of the owls."
Hellwig also points out that with the wage economy, good carvers are becoming rare, so the deaths of both Qimirpiks is a huge loss to the Inuit art community.
“There’s not that much carving going on here. It’s slowly dying off,” he remarks.
"We used to chat everyday, just about. We'd joke a lot about each other, stuff like that," Hellwig says of his late friend. "He would always send me funny face pictures, of the mood he was in. We used to have pretty big conversations. Usually it was based around the art... but just about every day we used to chat... about things that were not of great importance... it wasn't just business. We had a good friendship. I'm going to miss him, that's for sure."
