excerpt
A painting that goes in hockey arenas, that is toured across the country
from one end to the other, telling the story.
Then a whole flood of ideas and memories came into my mind crystal
clear. Grandmother doing her dance and her song in the winter – becoming
mesmerized and overcome by heat and emotion – going outside and the
Northern Lights roaring overhead – and she came out and stood beside me
and put her arm in mine and told me that those were the spirits of her ancestors
dancing. And she sensed the difficulties I was having over the loss of the
two women that I had loved so profoundly. She had said, “It’s a good thing
to let them go and dance”.
During her song and her story, there had been the need of an Isumataq
– a person or an object in whose presence wisdom might show itself. The
painting would be called Isumataq. And the dream driving all of this was
Nunavut.
That was the moment in which the whole thing exploded in one clear vision.
It must have been working quietly in my brain all this time and now
here it was – all together. Now it poured out and it all came together like a
jigsaw puzzle – every piece moved into its proper slot.
Covered in sweat, Ken’s body shook with nervous energy. His whole
being thrilled and he felt himself to be outside his body – completely
outside space and time. The vision was so clear, so compelling, that it
possessed him. He knew it would come to own him – night and day – and
he didn’t care. He gave himself up to it. He paced back and forth, details
of Isumataq whirling in his mind and dropping into place like numbers
on a slot machine.
He drove home that night with a new excitement coursing through
him. When he told Marsha he was going to create a giant painting on
the scale of the Sistine Chapel, she smiled and shook her head. In the
morning he told Diane who began to plan a studio renovation to accommodate
such an enormous painting. While they were hunched over the
sketch, Salvador appeared in the doorway, a bottle of brandy in his hand,
and a smile on his face.
“I have the equipment, the idea, the staff, and the availability of rock.
How would you like a giant Inukshuk in your studio?”
Three days later, Salvador pulled up in a new Saab, followed by a flatbed
truck – groaning under the weight of massive blocks of granite – and
two extended cab pickups loaded with burly men. At two in the morning,
after hours of heavy labour, a seven-foot tall Inukshuk towered over
the studio. Salvador waved his arm at it like a magician wielding a wand.
“There. Is it to your liking?”
“It’s perfect,” Ken said.
Salvador’s next project was an Inukshuk at the Columbus Centre!
Dragging Ken and Joseph Carrier to the lobby, he gestured grandly…
Manolis Aligizakis 