Nadine Spencer

Nadine Spencer is a multimedia artist that works in a wide range of materials, including caribou antler, bone, teeth, walrus balculum, fox fur, naluaq (scraped sealskin) and other organic materials, as well as glass beads to create her jewellery line which she sells via her business Tarraqtuut Beads & Co. She also works with paint and digital illustration.

Based in Iqaluit, NU, Spencer first learned to carve during a four-month stay in Sisimiut, Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), where she trained in a shop class offered through the local folk school. Upon returning to Iqaluit, she purchased a set of carving tools and sometime later began to create her own jewellery.

Although she began by working with bone and antler, Spencer expanded her practice to ptarmigan claws and wishbones as well as seal claws and walrus teeth in order to make her earrings, and then stretched further to take on beading. All of her organic materials are locally sourced either from other hunters, or from her own hunts.

“Anything that I do happen to catch, I do try and save a piece,” Spencer says of her willingness to experiment with new materials. [1]

Citing fellow Iqaluit-based jewellers Nicole Camphaug of ENB Artistan and Melissa Attagutsiak of Nuvuja9 among her artistic inspirations, as well as Alaskan artists Lisa Teparghuq and Britt’nee Kivliqtaruq Brower, Spencer likes to create qulliq shapes from bone and hopes that others will also be encouraged to create their own carved works.

“It’s good for the mind and so good for your mental health,” she says, “I hope it inspires others to try carving.”

This Profile was made possible through support from RBC Emerging Artists.