33 Facts About Kenojuak Ashevak

Kenojuak Ashevak was born on October 3,1927 at Camp Kerrasak on southern Baffin Island, and died on January 8,2013 in Cape Dorset, Nunavut.

Kenojuak Ashevak is celebrated as a leading figure of modern Inuit art and one of Canada's preeminent artists and cultural icons.

Kenojuak Ashevak made graphic art, drawings and prints in stone cut, lithography and etching, beloved by the public, museums and collectors alike.

Kenojuak Ashevak had an intuitive and sensitive way of working: she began her work without having a clear idea of the final result, letting herself be guided by her intuition and her own perception of colours and shapes.

Kenojuak Ashevak painted throughout her life, never ceasing to seek out new techniques to renew her artistic creation.

Kenojuak Ashevak was the first Inuk artist inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame, was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and promoted to Companion in 1982.

Kenojuak Ashevak received the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts and the Order of Nunavut.

Kenojuak Ashevak received Honorary Doctorates from Queen's University and the University of Toronto and many films were made about her life.

Kenojuak Ashevak was born in an igloo in an Inuit camp, Ikirasaqa or Ikirasaq, at the southern coast of Baffin Island.

Kenojuak Ashevak grew up in the heart of the semi-nomadic hunting tradition.

Kenojuak Ashevak was reluctant, she said, even playfully throwing pebbles at him when he would approach her.

Kenojuak Ashevak fell victim to tuberculosis, hospitalized between 1952 and 1955 in Parc Savard hospital in Quebec city where she's going to meet Harold Pfeiffer who taught arts and crafts to hospital patients, and a civil administrator and pioneer Inuit art promoter James Archibald Houston who will help her to launch her career.

Kenojuak Ashevak had just given birth when she was forcibly transferred; the baby was adopted by a neighbouring family.

Several of Kenojuak Ashevak's children died while she was confined in hospital.

The year after Johnniebo died in 1972, Kenojuak Ashevak remarried, to Etyguyakjua Pee; he died in 1977.

Kenojuak Ashevak had 11 children by her first husband and adopted five more; seven of her children died in childhood.

Kenojuak Ashevak became one of the first Inuit women in Cape Dorset to begin drawing.

Kenojuak Ashevak worked in graphite, coloured pencils and felt-tip pens, and occasionally used poster paints, watercolours or acrylics.

Kenojuak Ashevak designed several drawings for Canadian stamps and coins, and in 2004 she created the first Inuk-designed stained-glass window for the John Bell Chapel in Oakville, Ontario.

Kenojuak Ashevak became a member of the Royal Canadian Academy in 1974, and a member of the Order of Canada in 1982.

In 2002, her work was exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada in the exhibition Kenojuak Ashevak: To make something beautiful.

Kenojuak Ashevak received the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2008, and became a member of the Order of Nunavut in 2012.

Kenojuak Ashevak was already willing to let the pencil go, because she had the hand and the eye co-ordination to make the image she already had in her head.

Kenojuak Ashevak just sits down and she starts to draw.

The work of Ashevak Kenojuak can be found in the collections of Canada's National Gallery, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Burnaby Art Gallery.

Kenojuak Ashevak became the first Inuk artist inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame in 2001, and travelled to Toronto with her daughter, Silaqi, to attend the ceremony.

Up until her death, Kenojuak Ashevak contributed annually to the Cape Dorset Annual Print Release and continued to create new works.

Kenojuak Ashevak was one of the last living artists from the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative.

Since her death, prices for Kenojuak Ashevak's work have reached new records, including $59,000CAD paid for a copy of Rabbit Eating Seaweed.

In 2004, Kenojuak Ashevak designed a stained glass window for a chapel at Appleby College in Oakville, Ontario.

The window, of an Arctic char along with an owl against a vibrantly blue background, is the first such window made by an Inuk artist; it was suggested by two Biblical stories in which Jesus feeds a large crowd of people with two fish and a few loaves of bread, which for Kenojuak Ashevak thoroughly embodied the spirit of the Inuit community, where food is always shared.

Kenojuak Ashevak's work is included in the collection of the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, St Lawrence University, the National Gallery of Canada, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum and the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.

Kenojuak Ashevak's granddaughter narrates the Heritage Minute, as well as appearing in it with her family.