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Ashevak Adla

ASHEVAK ADLA

(ASHIVAK; ASHIVA)

Ashevak Adla was born on February 22, 1977, at the nursing station in Cape Dorset, Baffin Island, Northwest Territories. He is the eldest child of Kumajuk and David Adla, and the grandson of Cape Dorset carver Audla Pee.

It was his grandfather Audla who taught him how to carve. At the age of eleven Ashevak used to watch Audla making birds, and soon he could not help but try out his grandfather's tools. His first pieces were simple carvings, like the heads of birds or seals, but it was not long before he ventured into depicting more intricate subject matter. Adla also learned a lot by watching Nuna Parr and his late son Jutani working on bears.

Ashevak is one of the most promising Cape Dorset carvers of the young generation. He excels in representing walking and dancing bears, birds with widely open wings, and playful and carefree seals and walrus. He carves in serpentine, a metamorphic rock of varying green, brown, or black colour. It is a very hard stone indigenous to Baffin Island, with a composition similar to jade. Ashevak tends to polish his carvings to a high degree to best exhibit the beauty of the stone.

EXHIBITIONS:

February -April 1997          Stone & Bone The Inuit master Carvers of the Canadian Arctic
                                         The North West Company
                                         Held at the Sun Valley Centre for the Arts and Humanities
                                         Ketchum, Idaho