Timeless art takes shape in local artist’s studio

He and some of his helpers have made close to a dozen minature inukshuks from hand-selected stones collected from Yarmouth County beaches. “It’s become a national icon and only very recently,” said Gigeroff. “It’s a symbol that we’ve adopted for Canada through the Olympics.” Gigeroff views the trend as a “burgeoning of our Canadian consciousness” and says artists across the nation are making inukshuks in different forms. “I heard of one woman doing them out of green glass, so they look like frozen ice. Now they are moving away from the man form to create creatures of different kinds,” he said.

He says that the creation of inukshuks is especially popular with the younger set. “We’ve got thousands of tons of this stuff on our shores and kids have been building them just on their own. They’ve been doing it for years and years. We don’t see them because the waves come in and they wash them away. They are such primitive sculpture. It’s not school, it’s a natural thing to do.”

Part of Gigeroff’s attraction to the ancient art form is imagining its role for early northern hunters, who originally piled rocks in a cairn, then became more creative – stacking and balancing the rocks to become signposts indicating the direction of good fishing grounds, the way to good seal hunting, or the path of caribou. “They didn’t use cement or anything. They simply used gravity. I’ve had to go a step further because some of our stones are round,” said Gigeroff.

The hand-chosen stones are first cleaned of salt, accomplished in a dishwasher. Then the surfaces are ground. Various combinations are tried, with the stones being moved around in order to catch the light, repeat shapes and create attractive profiles. The stones are set and epoxy glue is used to hold them in place.

After they are glued together they are cleaned with emory paper. “There’s a lot of art in it,” said Gigeroff.

This is the first time he’s worked with stone in his long career as an artist. He studied sculpture for five nights a week in London, England, working mostly in clay, wax and plaster. He also studied sculpture for two years at the Ontario College of Art night school.

Gigeroff plans on making approximately a dozen inukshuks. He is selling them at Spears & MacLeod Pharmasave. Prices range from $80 for small ones to $150 for larger ones that measure eight or nine inches in height and width. “People ask me if I make them and I say partly, because the ocean and the ages really made them. We just put them together,” said Gigeroff.

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