Every now and then, we at Free Spirit Gallery gets our hands on some unique art that is not Native American or Inuit but from other cultures. In this case, we have a very nice Indian elephant carving from India.
As you can see, this hand painted piece is magnificent! For more information on this piece, see our webpage on Indian Elephant Carving.
Free Spirit Gallery has sourced several new Inuit sculptures of loons (Arctic birds) and they are wonderful pieces of artwork with amazing detail! We have not had any new Inuit sculptures available for some time so these are a real welcome. They are mid-end Inuit sculptures of about eight to ten inches in length so do not expect low-end prices. But these Inuit sculptures will still be made available to our customers at lower prices than street retail gallery prices.
All of these Inuit sculpturess of loons are being kept at our source supplier so they are not holding them exclusively for us. We will have to request to see if they are still available if any of our customers are interested.
Also, because these are not low-end sculptures, we will be doing all orders via phone so we can verify customer information rather than just online. Below are photos and details of each loon and Arctic bird. If you are interested in ordering any of them, send us an email with your contact phone number to the gallery (at) freespiritgallery (dot) ca replacing the (at) of course with @ and the (dot) with a period.
We will then confirm whether the Inuit sculpture you want is still available or not. If it is, we will call you to sort out the order details in order to secure it for you.
By Lyta Josephie of Iqaluit, 8.5 x 5 inches (length x height), $480 (free shipping within North America)
By Lyta Josephie of Iqaluit, 10.5 x 3 inches (length x height), $460 (free shipping within North America)
By Lyta Josephie of Iqaluit, 9 x 4 inches (length x height), $440 (free shipping within North America)
By Sangani Oshuitok of Iqaluit, 9.5 x 4.5 inches (length x height), $490 (free shipping within North America)
By Etulue Etidloie of Cape Dorset, 11.5 x 3.5 inches (length x height), $690 (free shipping within North America) - different lighting results in the different shades of greens below.
By Lyta Josephie of Iqaluit, 10 x 3 inches (length x height), $460 (free shipping within North America)
By Lyta Josephie of Iqaluit, 8 x 4 inches (length x height), $440 (free shipping within North America)
By Sangani Oshuitok of Iqaluit, 8 x 4 inches (length x height), $440 (free shipping within North America)
So again, all of these Inuit sculptures are available upon request. If you are interested in any of them (please note the prices above first), please email us at gallery (at) freespiritgallery (dot) ca replacing the (at) of course with @ and the (dot) with a period with your email address as well as which loon(s) you are interested in and we will get back to you.
By the way, if you missed our post about new Dancing Polar Bear Inuit carvings, see them at the link.
We at Free Spirit Gallery are excited to announce that one of our favourite Northwest Native Canadian artists, Todd Jason Baker, has just released a brand new limited edition aboriginal art print. This one is a rare Northwest Native art version of a snowgoose (in fact the first ever one I’ve seen).
This beautiful Canadian aboriginal art print is now available at Free Spirit Gallery and all the details are at a new webpage dedicated solely to this Pacific Northwest Snowgoose Art Print.
Free Spirit Gallery has sourced several new Inuit carvings of dancing polar bears and they are beauties! We have not had any new Inuit carvings available for some time so these are a real welcome.
They are mid-end Inuit carvings of about ten inches high so do not expect low-end prices. But these Inuit carvings will still be made available to our customers at lower prices than street retail gallery prices.
All of these Inuit carvings of polar bears are being kept at our source supplier so they are not holding them exclusively for us. We will have to request to see if they are still available if any of our customers are interested.
Also, because these are not low-end sculptures, we will be doing all orders via phone so we can verify customer information rather than just online. Below are photos and details of each dancing polar bear. If you are interested in ordering any of them, send us an email with your contact phone number to the gallery (at) freespiritgallery (dot) ca replacing the (at) of course with @ and the (dot) with a period.
We will then confirm whether the Inuit carving you want is still available or not. If it is, we will call you to sort out the order details in order to secure it for you.
By Pitseolak Oshutsiaq, 10 x 8.5 inches, $597 (free shipping within North America)
Dancing Polar Bear Inuit Carving #2
By Noah Kelly, 10 x 8 inches, $747 (free shipping within North America)
By Nuyalia Tunnillie, 11 x 5.5 inches, $747 (free shipping within North America)
By Johnny Manning, 9.5 x 5 inches, $847 (free shipping within North America)
By Allan Sheupiapik, 11 x 6 inches, $877 (free shipping within North America)
By Noah Parr, 10.5 x 6 inches, $747 (free shipping within North America)
By Joanie Ragee, 10.5 x 5 inches, $847 (free shipping within North America)
By Noo Atsiaq, 9.5 x 6 inches, $797 (free shipping within North America)
This last Inuit carving is of extra interest because the carver Noo Atsiaq very unfortunately committed suicide recently at a young age of 26. Therefore, we will not see anymore new Inuit carvings from this talented Inuit carver.
So again, all of these Inuit carvings are available upon request. If you are interested in any of them (please note the prices above first), please email us at gallery (at) freespiritgallery (dot) ca replacing the (at) of course with @ and the (dot) with a period with your email address as well as which dancing polar bear(s) you are interested in and we will get back to you.
Here are three Northwest Native Indian art fishing hook lures by Alfie Fishgap we have available at Free Spirit Gallery. These are authentic Northwest Native artwork on pieces featuring real fishing hooks!
Two of them have Northwest eagle designs while one has salmons. Each of these beautiful lures have its own webpage with more information. Just click below to access them.
Each of these pieces are unique, one of a kind artwork with no other duplicates available. So once each piece is ordered by a customer, it is gone!
Each year about this time, there is a mad rush to get holiday season gift buying done. And every year we get caught at Free Spirit Gallery when clients order last minute.
If you are planning on giving any Native art this holiday season, please get your orders in now, well before the mad rush starts. This is especially true for our Native prints because we may have to get more from our artists and this takes time.
Shipping also takes time especially if you are located far away from our base in Ontario, Canada.
So here are the links to our Native art prints whether at our gallery or at one of our partner sites - just don’t delay any holiday season ordering as you don’t want to be disappointed because artwork did not arrive in time.
North American Themed Poster Prints
Inuit Art Themed Poster Prints
We will aim to get all Native art shipments out by end of November. This is what we suggest as the latest for international shipments overseas in order for folks to get their artwork in time.
For North American clients, your last order should be the end of the first week in December in order to give enough time to get any out of stock orders fulfilled.
At Free Spirit Gallery, we have promoted the artwork of a lot of different Native artists, both from the Northwest First Nations and the Inuit communities. Recently, we also started to feature work by Ontario Woodlands artists.
I’ve been to many (but not all) of the homes of these Native artists so I have met some of their families. This is important to me because as a socially responsible gallery, we will work only with socially responsible Native artists.
Unfortunately, not all Native artists are socially responsible as some have found themselves in the wrong side of the law. These can be forgiven if they are committed to leave any unlawful life behind.
We will not knowingly promote or work with any artists that we know who are still on the wrong side of the law. One of the areas I personally feel strong about is the issue around violence against women.
Any male artists whom I know of which commits violent acts towards women in their communities will not be able to work with Free Spirit Gallery no matter how talented they are as artists.
My video below states my personal position on violence against women and how I would like to help - although this doesn’t have much to do with Native art.
But at least some of you will take comfort knowing that Free Spirit Gallery is in fact socially responsible.
If there are any aboriginal communities or non-aboriginal groups alike who would like to take a stance on violence against women with me, feel free to contact me through Free Spirit Gallery and let’s see what we can do.
The two Northwest Native killerwhale carvings by Gary Baker that were released from our previously damaged and repaired shelves were both sold within an hour of their announcement last week.
Congratulations to the two lucky collectors who found homes for these two beautiful pieces.
We just released yet another special piece from our previously damaged and repaired shelf. This time, it’s an awesome Inuit sculpture by Joanasie Jonah featuring a mother Beluga whale and her baby.
This is a piece that we would have sold for $450 and listed at street galleries for much more. See how much we have drastically discounted the price as well as multiple photos of this wonderful piece which deserves a home.
See the details at Mother/Baby Beluga Whales Inuit Carving
We’ve had these two nice Northwest Native art carvings if killerwhales by Gary Baker of Squamish Nation, BC lying on our shelves for the last few years because their tails had broken off during transit. Gary is one of the finest carvers of killerwhales and I especially like the way he does their faces.
It’s too bad that some carvers like Gary don’t pack their artwork as well as they produce them. It was pretty heartbreaking to see two of his carvings damaged while enroute to us in Ontario. But we recently decided to try and glue the tails back onto the killerwhales.
The glue seemed to work and although up close you can still see the cracks, from a distance, both carvings looked great on the wall. So we decided to offer both of them up for sale at drastically reduced prices.
So we offered these carvings up for $117 which is a whopping $100 off from the price of $217 which we would have sold them for if they were undamaged. We took some photos, posted the carvings up at our Free Spirit Gallery website and sent out an announcement to our mailing list.
Within an hour of sending out the announcement, both killerwhales were sold!
This shows the value of being on our email mailing list! You would be the first to know about such specials and if you act quickly, you could get some great Native art at huge discounts. We had to inform a few customers who ordered that the carvings were already sold.
Here’s the other Killerwhale carving below.
I brought a group to take in the Grand River Pow Wow 2013 at Six Nations Reservation near Brantford, Ontario this summer. I heard that it is one of the best local pow wows and it would be a great treat for some of my friends who have never seen Native Aboriginal culture and dances before.
The Pow Wow was just over an hour’s drive from Mississauga and was relatively easy to find. We got there about 11 am and paid our $10 admission. At that time, there was no activity in the main staging area yet but the vendors were all open.
Many of the vendors sold Native Aboriginal art and as predicted, they were virtually all from local artists. There were quite a few stone sculptures of Iroquois designs but most were quite small pieces. There was one vendor that specialized in little Aboriginal dolls playing lacrosse which were quite interesting (pictured below)
Also as I predicted, there were some original Native Woodland art paintings for sale there. This style of Native art was really the only style represented there but there were some really nice pieces as pictured below. And the prices were actually very good with small pieces starting at about $30 to some of the larger ones still under $100.
There was a really nice large Woodland art painting of a bear that would look great in my living room. I asked the artist Moses about the price and it was $1,000, a very good price for a large original Native art painting. Too bad he and the other Woodland artists there did not have any of their artwork in limited edition prints.
One vendor did display a few Native Aboriginal art totem poles which were nicely done. These were about three to four feet tall and their prices were about $450 each. Actually, we have a really nice Northwest Native totem pole made by master carver Cody Mathias - see it at Thunderbird Totem Pole if you haven’t seen it yet.
The big highlight for us was near the beginning of the event which was the opening Grand Entry of the Native Aboriginal Pow Wow dancers. They started the entry at about 12:20 pm and the line lasted about 45 to 60 minutes.
Unfortunately, it started to rain later in the day but we still caught some of the dancing competition with the junior dancers since we sat in the stands under unbrellas - yes, we were prepared. We didn’t think a little bit of rain was going to stop the dancers and we were right.
Of course, one of the things I really wanted to do at a pow wow was to try Native Aboriginal food and we were not disappointed. There were food vendors there that served buffalo burgers, wild rice salads, fried bread and corn soup. I has a buffalo burger and wild rice salad for about $8 and it was great.
All in all, it was a great day at the Grand River Pow Wow. Although the event is not as large or elaborate as the Canadian Aboriginal Festival, it is a nice local cultural event to go to. The Native dancing for the most part is quite good, the food is okay and there is some Native Aboriginal artwork to see and purchase. Just don’t expect very large art pieces.
So if you are in and around the southern Ontario region during the summer, an outing to the annual Grand River Pow Wow is a great event to attend.
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