Ola Andersen

Ola Andersen is an artist who specializes in making mitts, boots, bags and garments. From Makkovik, Nunatsiavut, NL, Andersen learned how to sew from her aunt Nellie Winters, a well-known textile artist. 

Andersen has been passionate about preserving Inuit ways of creating works from sealskin, fur and hide since her youth. Growing up, she often visited Winters and would observe her techniques for making Inuit textiles with organic materials. “I spent a lot of time at her house learning to sew with sinew, how to embroider and do beadwork,” Andersen says. [1] “Aunt Nellie gave me a lot of patterns for my slippers, mittens and whatever else I wanted to create.” During this time, she learned the integral skill of adapting scraps and any available materials into her works. 

Today Andersen’s art practice primarily consists of creating moosehide slippers with beaded tongues, mittens, handbags, coin purses, coats and decorative pins. She often works with sealskin, but her use of materials is dependent on their cost and availability in her region. In terms of themes of motifs, Andersen draws on her Inuk heritage for inspiration. “I’m partial to using the inukshuk or ulu in my patterns,” she says. “For example, I might incorporate an ulu done in a different colour of silk into the pattern of a silk coin purse.” This image and technique is visible in her sealskin coin purse where Andersen uses different colours of sealskin and fur to create contrast between the ulu emblem and the spotted grey sealskin that makes up the body of the purse. “I’m really passionate about keeping our ancestral knowledge alive through craft,” she says.

The revitalization of traditional knowledge and skills is a defining element in both Andersen’s art and research practices. In addition to her art practice, Andersen is a writer and retired teacher. In 2018 she received her Masters in Education from Memorial University in Newfoundland’s Labrador Campus in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, NL, and is pursuing her PhD in the university’s Arctic and Subarctic Futures program, where she focuses on community-based learning strategies for teachers in Nunatsiavut. Andersen believes in the importance of passing on traditional Inuit garment-making skills to younger generations and she has presented on the topic at the University of the Arctic in Rovaniemi, Finland. Several visits to Sapmi have greatly inspired her research, “...[including] how they use craft in their school systems,” she says.