In September and October, Woodberry Forest School features the exhibition Art of the Canadian Arctic: Inuit Prints from Cape Dorset. For thousands of years, the Inuit people, often called Eskimos, have lived in the Arctic regions of North America. While sculpture and animal-skin appliqué are long-standing artistic traditions, printmaking is relatively new. It was introduced in 1957 by the artist James Houston, who started a workshop at the small Canadian settlement of Cape Dorset on West Baffin Island, about 150 miles south of the Arctic Circle.

This exhibition of prints, curated by Judith Varney Burch, depicts the daily routines of the Inuit people, one of the world’s last hunting societies, and reveals in powerful imagery their physical and spiritual bond with the natural world. The first prints created at Cape Dorset are called stonecuts, in which the image is developed as a low-relief carving on serpentine, a soft stone native to the island. In 1961, engraving on copper plates was introduced, and lithography followed in 1972. Stencils are also incorporated in the printmaking process. Today, the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative continues to be a vital center of creativity in the Canadian Arctic, with skilled carvers and printmakers, working from the drawings of Inuit artists, producing prints that not only preserve the traditions of the region but also reveal the encroachment of the modern world.

There is a reception for the exhibition, free of charge and open to the public, in the Baker Gallery on Friday, September 14 from 5:30 to 7:00 pm. Judith Varney Burch, one of the world’s most respected authorities on Inuit art, will give a talk on the prints at 6:00 pm. She has dedicated the last thirty years to collecting, interpreting, and exhibiting the art of the Inuit people. She is a research collaborator at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History’s Arctic Studies Center and also runs the Arctic Inuit Gallery in Charlottesville, VA.

This exhibition, Art of the Canadian Arctic, runs in the Baker Gallery of the Walker Fine Arts Center through the end of October. It is free of charge and open to the public. Gallery hours are 9:00 to 5:00, Monday through Friday, and 1:00 to 5:00 on Saturday and Sunday. Woodberry Forest School is located four miles north of Orange off of Rt. 15. For more information, call Kelly Lonergan at 540-672-3990 or contact him at kelly_lonergan@woodberry.org.