Print

included the endless pursuit of small birds and animals in the hope of captur- ing them at last. My uncle Niviaqsi, as yet unmarried, carved small toys out of driftwood which lay scattered along the shoreline. Miniature figures, boats and sleds gave me hours of enjoyment’’ (Blodgett 10). These early fascinations proved deep and lasting, becoming central features of Kenojuak’s work—from a fondness for birds as subjects, to the sense of intimate, doll-like worlds. Kenojuak’s silent, glacial homeland was also the site of dream-like occur- rences and mysterious natural forces. In a place where night-skies erupt with northern lights and deep snow erases all reference points, there is much about reality that feels enigmatic and capricious. Kenojuak still remembers eerie scenes from her early years. ‘‘Often we children wandered over old gravesites where human bones lay scattered on the rocks . . . . We feared the spirits of the ancient dead and whistled to blow away the supernatural beings . . . .’’ Another time, ‘‘ . . . [while] traveling . . . along the floe edge . . . of deteriorating sea-ice, . . . I suddenly saw a creature with long black flowing hair swimming away from us . . . . We had caught a glimpse of the legendary Talelayu, goddess of all the creatures of the sea . . . ’’ (Blodgett 10). At the age of nineteen, Kenojuak married a local hunter named Johnniebo, according to the wishes of her family. Shortly afterwards, however, she devel- oped tuberculosis and was hospitalized for three years in Quebec City. While there, she suffered a series of health crises, but her worst difficulty came when she learned of the deaths of her two children from spoiled meat and illness. Shortly after, nearly dying, Kenojuak had a dream of her father, as if he materi- alized to support her, and she still attributes her recovery to that vision. Soon after, she felt strong enough to enter the hospital’s crafts program, making dolls and sealskin bags with her own beaded designs. Eventually, Kenojuak returned to her husband, and together they lived a tra- ditional life in numerous camps on Baffin Island and the surrounding area. During the 1950s they moved to Keakto near Cape Dorset, where they met James Houston, a nonnative government administrator who was organizing an indigenous arts program. He and his wife Alma encouraged both Kenojuak and Johnniebo in their artistic endeavors—urging them to carve in stone and draw, as the next step toward a fully developed, self-sustaining, career. Kenojuak’s initial response to the new media was one of trepidation. She later told biographers that her ‘‘heart started to pound’’ when the Houstons first ‘‘approached me to draw on a piece of paper.’’ She continued, ‘‘I was try- ing to do my best to say something on a piece of paper that would bring food to the family. I guess I was thinking of the animals and beautiful flowers that covered our beautiful, untouched land’’ (Hessel 155). Historically, the Inuit people neither had paper nor created drawings. But once the idea was introduced, it caught on rapidly. It soon evolved into print- making and became an official program of the Canadian government, creating work and income for the northern region’s indigenous people. Kenojuak’s drawings, along with those of other Inuit artists, were rapidly converted to prints for sale to outside individuals and institutions. Her first print, Rabbit Eating Seaweed (1958), was a dream-like image from a design she had previ- ously created on a sealskin pouch. 4 Kenojuak Ashevak