Meet Our Board

William “Lane” Phillips, President

I have been collecting Inuit art for about 30 years, starting primarily with Cape Dorset prints, and have expanded my collecting to include sculpture and prints from other communities as well. I probably have more than 150 prints and drawings (mostly Cape Dorset) and about 100 sculptures (ranging from miniscule to massive). I have a fairly comprehensive library on Inuit art as well. My wife and I have been lucky enough to have befriended many local collectors and former gallery owners (all those Cape Dorset openings!), who help to provide a support base for indulging and understanding our addiction. Other collecting interests include NW Coast art and masks and contemporary crafts. My wife and I hope to help provide a focus for Twin Cities collectors to get together and share their interests.

Read letters from the Board President:
- » Goals, December 2009
- » IAS Website and IAS Membership, December 2009

I have been a member of the IAS since the second meeting in Dearborn, MI and I have attended nearly all the meetings since that time.

Janet Beylin, Vice President

I am the newest addition to the IAS Board, and the newest also to Inuit art.

I work in the Anthropology Collections department of the Cranbrook Institute of Science in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. One day I was looking for an object to research and write up for the museum's website, and I came across an exquisite model of an Inuit hunter in his kayak. I was utterly intrigued, particularly by the detail and beauty of the kayak itself. Researching this piece introduced me not only to Historical Period traders, but also to the greater and more complex picture of Inuit art and culture.

Soon after, I stumbled across the Dennos Museum, and the realization that I could actually own Inuit art pieces. Shortly thereafter, I attended my first IAS meeting (Traverse City), with more dealers, lectures, and similarly interested people. As with many things, the more exposure I had, the more interested I became, and the more I learned, the deeper was my appreciation.

I am grateful for the opportunities provided by the Annual Meetings, and I hope through my Board membership to reach others as the IAS has reached and inspired me.
Ann Conway, Secretary

My introduction to Inuit culture began in 1976 and was a total accident. I had taken my children to Toronto for the weekend and the science museum was on the agenda. They had a live demonstration of an Inuit camp with men and women working on projects and throat singing. We left with two small soapstone carvings and the seed of an interest that world come to be an important part of my life.

I found other soapstone pieces as I sailed (my other passion) the North Channel of Georgian Bay and other Canadian waters. This was followed by my discovery of the Dennos Museum in Traverse City. Now I had a regular source of Inuit sculpture. As fate would have it, my brother settled in Traverse City and the water there is dependably deep for my boat. What good reasons beyond a good source of Inuit art to retire to that community. So that is where I can be found.
The next big event was reading about a meeting in Dearborn, MI of people interested in Inuit art. I was able to attend and the rest is history. I am a member of the Inuit Art Society and happy to have found like-minded souls who are touched by this art form.
Claude M. Weil, Treasurer

My first introduction to Inuit (then Eskimo) art occurred in 1971 when I was Director of the Center for Continuing Education at the University of Chicago. A gentleman named Earl Wadjyk, who owned an Eskimo Art Gallery in Madison, Wisconsin called The Great White Bear, approached me and asked whether he might rent some of our space to exhibit and sell some of his wares. Not knowing anything about Eskimo art, I found the idea intriguing and approved his request.

A few months later he came for his first show and I was smitten, though I made only a couple small and rather tentative purchases: a head by Ovilu from Eskimo Point and a mother and child by Tuksweetok, also from Eskimo Point. Earl returned to our Center twice annually until 1981 and I started making more substantial purchases, both sculptures and prints.Additionally, my brother had moved to Saskatoon, Canada and my visits there exposed me to further temptation. I also found that the Department of Interior in Washington had a very nice shop where Inuit art could be bought - primarily from Alaska.

With the founding of the Inuit Art Society, I became a more regular purchaser and have built a substantial collection of sculptures, prints and other Inuit artifacts. I’ve visited the IAF festival in Ottawa and recently visited Iqaluit.

What is it that draws me to Inuit Art. It is part of my interest in folk art acquired while traveling in many parts of the world. I find that Inuit pieces particularly speak to me very directly. They create an intimacy which few other art forms do. I hope that the endearing quality of naiveté will not be lost as Inuk artists are exposed to more sophisticated forms of art.
Susan E. Beck, Board Member-at-Large

I have been collecting Inuit art since my mid-20’s. I found myself in Canada a lot during my early marketing career, and fell in love with how the Inuit express themselves in their native materials. Initially, I was devoted just to their sculpture, particularly sednas and transformation pieces, but have grown to love and collect prints.

I was always so disappointed when people came to my home and never once commented on my collection. Despite my occasional trips to the local elementary school when my children were young to share pieces of my collection and my passion for the Inuit culture, I essentially collected in isolation. Then when I heard a group of like-minded fellow Inuit art collectors was coming together in the Midwest (which ultimately became the Inuit Art Society), I was ecstatic. I actually had someone to share my “collecting” stories with, even if it was only once a year at our annual meeting. I subsequently joined the board and like my fellow board members, am committed to sharing our enthusiasm for this wonderful art form. I hope someday to actually visit the carving communities in Nunavut.
Betty Lou Cooke, Board Member-at-Large

Pudlo made me do it! As a writer and a marketing communications consultant, I bear the mark of the copywriter: insatiable curiosity. Having written for radio, TV, print, and now the Web, my curiosity’s scope is broad, as is my multi-genre art collection and advocacy. As a bride, I lived in a town carved out of the Wind River Indian Reservation, and my affinity for Native American art was born there.

My Inuit epiphany occurred when I first saw Pudlo Pudlat’s “Blue Muskox” with its snout cut off by the edge of the print—such imagination! I soon acquired four more of Pudlo’s whimsical prints plus other prints, sculptures, a bookshelf of publications about the Inuit, and a collection of Inuit artifacts, including games and toys. I have yet to buy a piece of John Kurok’s ceramics, but I certainly covet one. A good day for me is when I learn something new, and a superlative one is when that information concerns the Inuit. So, a few years ago when I received an email from the Dennos Museum (Traverse City, MI) about the formation of the Inuit Art Society, I immediately joined. Now, I’m enjoying more and more superlative days!
Carolyn Drake, Board Member-at-Large

My interest in the Arctic began the year before my fifth birthday. The sparks that captured my attention were the photographs and conversations our neighbor, who was a world traveler and photographer, shared with my parents. Then in the 1970’s a train ride to Moosonee, which was followed with a boat ride in James Bay, brought me closer to the Arctic.

An opportunity to make purchases of Inuit art came when my husband and I moved to Traverse City, MI and he became a professor at Northwestern Michigan College. Purchasing Inuit art and selling it to raise dollars to buy books was an established activity on the NMC campus. I recall that at our first social gathering I was asked by more than one person, “Have you made your Inuit art purchase at the library?” We had and when Julie Klaper and Eliot Waldman organized a meeting in Indianapolis for those interested in forming a society, the Drake name was on their list of Inuit art enthusiasts.

I believe in the mission statement of the Inuit Art Society and will continue to promote it by word of mouth to others who show an interest in learning about and promoting the art and culture of the Arctic people.
Chuck Hudson, Board Member-at-Large

It began in 1976 with a print from Bernie Rink’s collection which is now at the Dennos Museum of Northwestern Michigan College. The print was Basking Seals by Anna. I stood gawking at drawers of prints Bernie had amassed in an art field few recognized as culturally astute or relevant. You never think of a collection when you begin with only one.

A few carvings came next. I was intrigued with transformations and their stories. The Inuit were pulling me and I wanted to know who these people were. Twenty years after that first print, my family and I joined Judy Burch of Arctic Inuit Art in 1996 on an adventure to the artists and ice at Pangnirtung, Pond Inlet and the floe edge where we tented for four days. There were seven of us plus seven guides and their guns. We joked until we saw “Nanook’s” paw print.

At Pang and Pond Inlet, I met the Inuit artists of some of my collected pieces and began to feel how the carver’s spirit infused the piece of art each created. (I am a retired graphics designer whose senses will never retire.) I couldn’t understand Inuktitut, but the town’s environment showed me the harshness in which these artists lived and thrived and why “spirits” were needed to give these people faith to protect their families. Now I not only appreciate my Inuit art for its form, line and color, but for its spirit as well.

Though my collection encompasses many animal, myth and transformation images, my favorite has become Sedna, mother of all sea creatures.

Learning that part of the Inuit Art Society’s reason for being created was education about the culture of the Inuit makes those who join us more than collectors of art. We will learn, and with time, have an understanding of their 4000 year old culture.
Carol P. Klein, Board Member-at-Large

I have always been a collector of many types of art, in part as a result of my college art education. Upon making my first purchase of Inuit art in Canada, sometime in the 60’s, the beginning of my collection and my love of the art — primarily sculpture, but graphics as well — was formed. Today, that first piece is still one of my favorites. My pieces have been found in Canada, California, our IAS meetings and primarily Michigan, from the Dennos Museum to estate sales and flea markets, as well as one from an IAS member.
Ellen Leavitt, Board Member-at-Large

In the late 1970’s or early 80’s, while in Banff, Canada, my husband Phil and I were attracted to some art in a shop window. Walking in, we spotted two prints on the wall — a Pudlo and an Oonark. There was instant attraction. We purchased both. For years after that, we looked for Inuit art as we traveled and purchased when we could. None of our friends was familiar with or interested in this art and few galleries featured it.

We now have a fairly large collection of prints, most featuring animals, particularly owls and birds. Our favorite print artists are Pudlo, Oonark, Sheojuk and Kenojuak and Kananginak. We have a smaller collection of sculpture mainly of animals. Our sculptures include Nuna Parr and Pauta Saila bears, several shamanistic forms, and a very large granite humpback whale by Gilbert Hay.

On an Arctic cruise in 2004, I walked into a Cape Dorset co-op and there sat Kenojuak Ashevak selling some artist proofs. I was totally awed and thrilled to talk with and buy work directly from her. On this trip, we also bought directly from Nuna Parr and Kananginak Pootoogook.

The Inuit Art Society has been a wonderful way for us to meet others who appreciate this unique art, see private collections and meet talented, interesting artists. We have been involved since its inception, and gratified that though social, educational and just plain fun, IAS meetings are promoting and supporting Inuit artists and culture.
Gabriel J. Rosenberg, M.D., Board Member-at-Large, former President

My wife and I began collecting Inuit soapstone around 1959. As a physician in the Air Force and stationed in Goose Bay, Labrador, a fellow physician and I went to Baffin Island on an air-evac flight to pick-up a sick airman. While we were there, we went into the Hudson Bay store where we saw Inuit soapstone carvings. We each bought several pieces. From that moment on, my wife Fran and I became collectors. We currently have 95 pieces in our collection. In addition, we also have over 250 pieces of primarily Native American art from both northwestern and southwestern tribes. As you all know, collecting art is a bad disease!