In the sixth article in our series on how natural materials are transformed into artworks, we're looking at the bones of sea mammals. While a frequent element in many Inuit sculptures, bones can come from many different animals, and that impacts how the bones need to be prepared. For this piece in our material series, we examine the preparation process for sea mammal bones, which require different steps than those of land mammals.
Our guide through this process is Kim Kleist-Eriksen, a sculptor from Nuuk, Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), who first started working with bone 11 years ago when he sculpted a ring from a walrus tusk that had been passed from his grandfather to father and then him, and with which he proposed to his now-wife. Since then, he has expanded his practice to work with steatite, diamonds, whale vertebrae and sperm whale teeth, but his specialty is working with walrus skulls and tusks, from which he makes intricately detailed figures representing humans, animals and more.
Step 1: Hunt
Kleist-Eriksen begins the process out in the ocean, hunting walrus himself alongside his father and, previously, his late grandfather during the season, which lasts from February to April. “We sail out there for about two hours, where you can almost not see the land anymore,” he says. [1] Kleist-Eriksen learned to hunt walrus from his grandfather, making the hunt a family pastime. “The wonderful thing about that is I get to have a lot of great memories with my grandfather,” he says brightly.
Robert Kautuk After Cutting Up Two Walruses, Iglulik (2016) Digital photograph © THE ARTIST
Step 2: Remove the Flesh
After catching and killing the walrus, Kleist-Eriksen butchers the animal by removing as much of the skin and meat as he can. While for sculpting he’s primarily interested in the bone, other parts of the walrus have uses for food or decoration, such as the whiskers. “The mustache, we call it ‘umiit,’ I collect,” he says.
Walrus craniums which still have flesh to remove PHOTO HANS PETER TOBIASSEN
Step 3: Marine Feast
Once he has removed as much of the soft tissue as he can by hand, Kleist-Eriksen finds an island at low tide and sinks the cranium into the water at the shore “so it’s barely visible.” He covers the head in fishing nets to weigh it down and ensure it stays put with all its parts—the jawbone in particular will otherwise detach and roll away and sometimes winter ice can disturb the bones if they are not properly anchored. When the tide rises, shore-dwelling fish, krill and insects—”we call them ‘kinguppat,’” he says—eat any remaining meat, cleaning the skull for him. This process takes at least two to three weeks, with Kleist-Eriksen checking the skull weekly. “It all depends how well I have skinned it, how well the small krill and insects that live in the shorelines take out the gunk.”
Soaking the bones PHOTO HANS PETER TOBIASSEN
Step 4: Boil
Once he determines that the skull is clean of all soft tissue, Kleist-Eriksen takes it back to his workshop to start removing oil from the skull. All mammal bones contain natural fats and lipids stored in the bone, but mammals in the Arctic Ocean are particularly rich in these fats due to the cold environment. The oil is very fragrant and sticky—“dead whale stinks like hell and the oil is one of the worst,” says Kleist-Eriksen, recounting that he once got some on his hands and it took him four days to fully remove it—so the oil needs to be properly rendered away from the bone before sculpting can begin.
Since walrus heads are typically larger than 2 feet wide and have tusks extending from the skull, which can be longer than 3 feet, Kleist-Eriksen uses a “big-ass cook pot,” to render these lipids from the skull. He boils the skull for two to three hours to ensure as much oil is removed as possible.
Bleaching the bones PHOTO HANS PETER TOBIASSEN
Step 5: Bleach
After boiling is complete, Kleist-Eriksen transfers the skull to a big tub and immerses it in a water and peroxide solution. This step both removes any lingering oil and bleaches the bone, turning it from a colour Kleist-Eriksen describes as “pee yellow” to the ivories and beiges more commonly seen in sculpture. How long the skull remains in the solution depends on the final desired colour. It can turn bright white if left long enough. Kleist-Eriksen, however, generally only submerges it for half a day. “I like to keep it more natural,” he says. After removing it from the solution, he rinses it with water and sets it to dry.
Walrus tusks before and after bleaching PHOTO HANS PETER TOBIASSEN
While this is the process he uses for walrus cranium, he is reluctant to work on fresh bone from other sea mammals, whales in particular, because they are difficult to bring through this process. “Whenever I see a whale vertebrae with a lot of oil still, it’s not worth it,” he says. “It’s so much work, so much waste, so much peroxide, and it becomes too toxic.” Instead, when he works with whale vertebrae or teeth, he generally sources either from Facebook, where he buys from people who have them in their houses as decoration, or tries to find bones on the shore where they have already naturally worn out the oil and been bleached by the sun.
Drying the skulls and tusks in the sunlight PHOTO HANS PETER TOBIASSEN
Step 6: Prep and Dry
Although the skull’s surface may be dried after the water rinse, the cranium still needs to undergo a lengthier drying period of a month before sculpting can begin. “The tooth has nerves inside,” explains Kleist-Eriksen. “You have to pull out the tusk and clean it out” before you can begin sculpting. An extended drying time makes these nerves whither, so they are much easier to remove.
A finished cranium, ready to be sculpted PHOTO HANS PETER TOBIASSEN
Step 7: Sculpt
Following this month of drying and the nerve removal, the cranium is ready to be sculpted. Kleist-Eriksen uses a Dremel machine and a series of different burrs to create his intricately detailed sculptures.