Faucet
Description
‘Faucet’ by Jutai Toonoo — Cape Dorset Inuit Art from Dorset Fine Arts 2012 original hand drawing collection presented by DaVic Gallery of Native Canadian Arts.
Condition: No condition to be noted.
Description by Artist: No description by artist found.
Notes from DaVic Gallery: what could possibly inspire Jutai to draw such trivial kitchen / laundry element with such reverence or admiration? This is the largest drawing piece that I have in my inventory measuring almost 40” tall by 50” wide, that is, almost one meter tall by over one meter wide. Take out your measuring tape and try draw this space in the air to get an idea how big this is. This is large! Look at other pieces by Jutai including nudes, portraits, and ask yourself, why would he use the largest paper to draw such trivial thing as a faucet?
Would you have even considered this drawing to be categorized as Inuit Art had you not seen in this gallery or presented by Dorset Fine Arts? Perhaps the need to verify is what brought you to the details page for this drawing. Jutai Toonoo certainly will challenge your secured sense of what you understood Inuit Art is all about. Jutai’s drawings cast a spell on us, the magic that attracts us and keeps us staring at his works, is the intensity of life that breathes from all of his works. The viewer can feel the energy Jutai put into each of his works and now that energy attracts us, calls us to try to understand what he is expressing. That is the keyword in Jutai’s works, expression.
Such an amazing, intriguing, refreshing surprise to the Inuit Art collector and connoisseurs alike! Are you scratching your head? Don’t. Simply admire this beautiful and amazing composition that truly overflows with life energy, despite the topic, and that takes higher value when you know how and why this is such a rare piece based on the cultural background of the author. How can you not just bathe in such moment expressed with such energy Jutai pours into each and every piece he created?
Let’s first take note again of the simplicity in colours and Technic of this drawing, and yet the power it exercises to call on the attention of the viewer in not one single point. We have a makeshift faucet installation with exposed pluming pipes, and fixed to the base sitting on wooden blocks. Objects and lines balance more because of the directions, the vertical and the horizontal, rather than in weight as it is clear that most of the weight in this drawing lays in the lower half. The main faucet turned more to the right to somehow balance the pipes on the left. The cloth lying on the right also helps keep balance right from left side as much of the pipes are installed on the left side. As opposed to a child that draws from his imagination, Jutai draws from details of his experiences: a faucet, a nail, a saw, a falling nail, his wife waking up with bad hair …
Jutai certainly challenges the seasoned Inuit Art collector throwing pieces such as this in the collector’s way to view. However, it is a challenge only if one decides to stop and look. Jutai’s drawings do not tell stories about the old ways of nomadic Inuit culture. There is no tone of nostalgia or stories of hunter’s bravery or of dangerous situations. Jutai’s drawings are of an artist with childlike emotions sharing his experiences with the emotion he must have felt at the time giving breath to his works, as trivial as they may be, such as this, a Faucet. This happens to be an artist of Inuit decent that though he did not live a nomadic life, he now lives in this environment and knows that such trivial things that we, and even his entire community, take for granted, these are things that were never available and that are now a necessity. “I bring to you, The Faucet.” Tah-daaah! And with this thing, you no longer need to go outside to fetch snow and melt it before you can drink it or clean with it. No, you can now just turn this lever that allows the water trapped inside these pipes here to flow out the spout here, and voila, water! Right here, inside your house. Not only that, the lever with “H” engraved gives you Hot water, while the lever with “C” in it gives you cold water. Yes it does! Duh? Well, what would we do without such “trivial and inconsequential” thing part of our daily lives? Can you imagine? Not so trivial anymore is it? This could for everything that is truly vital and yet that we take for granted and pass unnoticed.