Since it began in 2004, the Sundog Studio has rapidly grown from a traditional carving program designed to instruct a handful of young artists every few months into a first nations carving school - complete with multi-year programs, a gallery and workshop - and an incubator for nearly lost artistic traditions.

But that isn't enough for founder and director Andrew Finton. Now he wants it to become the hub of Yukon's cultural industry.

Finton first conceived of a carving school when he was employed as a woodworking teacher for the Yukon Territorial Government (YTG).

At the time, the focus of his classes was everyday sort of work - bookcases, sheds, trunks - but after many years, he realized the program wasn't covering all the bases that needed covering.

"I felt we could do something more culturally relevant," he said this week from his office at the Sundog Carvers Studio in downtown Whitehorse.

"We wanted to offer more."

By more, he was thinking not only of teaching traditional first nations carving, but also of providing his students with the support network so many of them needed.

He imagined a place where young people could develop more than their artistic skills. He wanted to give them experience in marketing their creations, managing the money they made and overcoming the obstacles of family violence, substance abuse and crippling frustration he saw in too many young aboriginal Yukoners.

From that idea, the Sundogs Retreat was created.

It began with the Carving Our Paths project. Originally a 16-week program, it has grown to 44 weeks and gives emerging, under-30 artists the basic skills they need to become professionals.

"We were just scratching the surface then," Finton says. "Change takes time."

So, in 2006, Journey Far was added. This advanced program lasts 2 1/2 years and takes in carvers of all ages - graduates of the earlier program and those who have learned outside of Sundog.

"Basically, the programs are broken into three parts," Finton explains. Fifty per cent of the focus is on the actual art, while another 20 per cent is on the business of marketing and selling that art.

"We're trying to get students to be self-sufficient, either as artists or as teachers," says Finton.

The final 30 per cent of time and energy are spent "looking at other issues that stand in the way of students' development."

Service Canada and the YTG have supported the programs from the beginning, and just this week, the Yukon pledged $345,000 a year to keep Journey Far going for the next three years.

That's good news for Finton, but even better is the contact he made earlier this year.

In February, Finton was approached by Bill Moore, the North West Company's director of Inuit art marketing.

The company, formerly the Northern Stores Division of the Hudson's Bay Company, buys millions worth of Inuit carvings and prints every year and sells the pieces exclusively to galleries throughout the Americas and Europe.

"We want to have art representing every place we do business," Moore said from his Toronto office today. "We have locations from the High Arctic to the low South Pacific. We are in the Yukon and we want Yukon art."

"He's not interested in buying a couple of pieces a month," Finton says of how much business Moore wants to do in the territory.

"I was writing down numbers as we were talking and when he said 40 to 50 thousand and looked up and said, 'Excuse me, did you say you want to spend 50 thousand a month?' He said, 'No, a week.'"

Even with all the Sundogs carvers working full tilt, Finton says, they won't be able to meet that kind of demand. Moore cleaned them out on just one visit, leaving behind a stack of commissions that will keep the studio humming in the coming weeks.

Among the commissions is a pair of short totems that will grace a doorway in Moore's gallery that leads from the Inuit art section to the coastal area.

"We've recently tripled our space," Moore says of the Toronto showroom. "We're trying to represent aboriginal art form all the locations we operate from."

Finton hopes the expanded space will be filled by Yukon first nations art.

He uses Cape Dorset - known as the Inuit art capital of Canada - as an example of just how much work Moore is looking for.

The North West Company buys $2.5 million worth of soapstone carvings a year from the 1,150-person town located at the southern tip of Baffin Island.

The fact that a majority of Cape Dorset's residents make their living as carvers and printmakers is a testament to the success of the art industry in the primarily first nations town.

"There's a potential to have a massive cultural industry," Finton says of the untapped artistic resources he sees in the Yukon. "It hasn't really happened here yet and this is our chance."

Moore, Finton says, "is basically interested in buying as much artwork as we can produce." But, he adds, if the Yukon can't come up with the goods, Moore will look elsewhere - to B.C. and Alaska - for the coastal art he wants.

"We need to create a central location for buyers and artists to meet.

"This really ties into the school idea," Finton continues.

What he wants to see is the creation of an arts centre where people can come to learn, teach, buy and experience first nations art.

A centre that provides everything from a daycare for the people working and studying there, to a gallery and theatre where tourists can try their hand at carving, drum-making, leather work and more.

It would also act as the point of sale for big buyers like Moore. And as it does at the current Sundog Studio gallery, all the money would go directly to the artists.

Finton has received verbal pledges of support from Premier Dennis Fentie, Economic Development Minister Jim Kenyon and Tourism and Culture Minister Elaine Taylor, all three of whom met with Moore when he was in town recently.

We had a really good first meeting and a really positive first response from everybody," Moore says. "We've hopefully established a very good opening relationship."

Finton is happy to have the politicians behind him, but he is quick to warn he's not talking small potatoes here.

"Twenty thousand dollars isn't going to do it," he says. "We need to talk about hundreds of thousands to get this started."

Part of the work is already being done with a recently completed feasibility study that asked the 14 Yukon first nations for input into how they would like to see the teaching and marketing of their traditional art expand.

Finton sees the art centre as one of the answers to the Yukon's dire graduation statistics, revealed during Auditor General Sheila Fraser's visit in February.

"If I were a first nations parent and I found out my kids had a 40 per cent chance of graduating, I would be furious," he says before moving on to a dozen success stories of students referred to him because "the only place they were doing well was art class.

"Then they come to us and they become the best artists in the program."

But the studio on Fourth Avenue near Ogilvie Street can only house so many students and teachers, so hopeful carvers are being turned away.

Not only that, but Finton doesn't have the space to incorporate the myriad other Yukon crafts.

"We have people coming in every day with more suggestions of things we could be doing - beading, drum-making, leather work, printmaking - there is just so much."

Finton looks across Fourth Avenue to the empty former Canadian Tire building between Ogilvie and Ray streets. That's where he imagines the school going.

"We would cover it with art," he enthuses. "Totems and panels all around the outside, it would be beautiful. It would be the Yukon tourist draw.

"Right now when people think Yukon, they think Gold Rush - we're going to show them how much more we have to offer."

In the mean time, Finton has plenty of other projects to complete and short-term goals to reach: Moore wants the Teslin Dancers to perform at the grand opening of the North West Company's new showroom, so money has to be found for the trip.

The Sundog Carvers will begin working on a dugout canoe - the first made in the Yukon for 100 years - in June, and they are still looking for donations of wild meat, fuel and other supplies for the project.

The commissions made in February must be filled and more work needs to be done in preparation for the buyer's next visit.

But he isn't distracted from the ultimate goal: Giving as many people as possible the skills to succeed.

"Every student you put through here, you're impacting a whole circle of people," he says, then adds with a laugh and a shrug, "Really, I just want to work with the youth, but once this is started, it's a positive snowball effect."