Drawing J

 

Ball game

notes on content:

The interview with elders below includes a discussion of the ball game depicted here.

“Sharing the Iñupiaq Language,” American Museum of Natural History,” 2011 (source: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aJ1rS0v9AY)

Notes on form/style:

Elizabeth Hutchinson (instructor):  The depiction of the figures in this drawing bears some resemblance to the work of Kokituk, whose work is represented in the collection of Kathleen Lopp Smith, daughter of the Lopps.

As in Smith’s drawing, the Ball Game uses a strong line to define the face in profile and references the nose with two dots on frontal views, incorporates carefully-drawn eyes complete with aureolas, and renders small hands at the end of funnel-shaped arms.  Both images also show a dramatic range of  scale among the figures, perhaps a marker of the relative age of each person depicted.  The small figures among the viewers may be children, or the heroic scale of the figures at the center of the scene may simply reference their significance to the scene.

On the verso: