Inuk artist wins Northwestel directory cover contest with smartphone-created digital artwork
March 8, 2019
Iqaluit, NU — A young Inuk artist has turned her skills with a stylus pen into a big win in this year’s Northwestel Directory Cover Art competition. Dayle Kubluitok’s digital artwork Four Corners, was officially unveiled this evening as the cover image of Northwestel’s 2019/20 phone directory for Nunavut.
For more than 30 years, Northwestel has invited northern artists to submit their work for a chance to appear on the covers of its regional phone directories. Winners are selected by Northwestel, in consultation with the local arts community, and each winning entry is awarded $3,000.
A first-time entrant in the annual contest, Kubluitok is in a class all by herself – she recreated the downtown Iqaluit intersection by using her smartphone to digitally sketch out the scene, then added colour and shadows using a graphic design tablet at home.
“I basically do all my art on my phone. At the time, I was waiting for a cab at the bank, so I sketched out the landscape on my phone. The northern lights were out, and I just started off with the lamppost because I thought it looked really neat. Later that night I decided to finish it while hanging out with my friends.”
Originally from Rankin Inlet, Kubluitok briefly attended art school at Centennial College in Toronto but returned to Nunavut due to the high cost of education. Now living in Iqaluit, Kubluitok has been honing her skills and her art career is beginning to take off – she’s receiving commission requests and just started a new graphic design job with Nunavut Arctic College.
“After I posted Four Corners to Facebook, it kinda blew up. Then when I found I won, I was overwhelmed. I feel really confident now and I’ve been doing more and more art. I started getting requests for graphic design and illustration and I did some back covers of magazines. It’s all been hard work, but I’m happy where I’m at right now.”
Northwestel’s President, Curtis Shaw, is excited to see new types of artwork coming from a new generation of northern artists.
“With more than 30 years’ worth of beautiful northern artwork adorning the covers of Northwestel directories, it is hard to stand out in the crowd, but Four Corners does. Dayle’s digital rendering of this well-known Iqaluit location shows how the next generation of northern artists can use new technology to effectively capture our unique northern landscape. Northwestel is proud to share Dayle’s artwork with everyone in Nunavut and to help support her development as a professional artist.”
Swap your directory and support local schools
The new 2019/20 directories will be available at directory pick-up locations throughout Nunavut in the coming weeks. From now until April 26, 2019, outdated phone directories can be recycled to support local students through Northwestel’s Directory Recycling Program.
Each year, northern students can collect outdated telephone directories for recycling to earn cash rewards from Northwestel to help fund school activities. Details about the program, including a list of participating schools, are available at https://www.nwtel.ca/art-directory-competition/2020-directory-competition-winners
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Contact:
Matt Wallace
Manager, External Communications
(867) 455-4209
media@nwtel.ca
