Kenojuak occasionally carved small works in the mid 1950s, before she ever took up drawing. She made sculptures until about 1990, at which time she decided her hands were no longer strong enough to continue. Kenojuak was especially active as a sculptor in the late 1960s and early 1980s. Family with Dog was carved c. 1967-68; a new stone deposit had just been found at Markham Bay, and Kenojuak was one of the first Cape Dorset artists to work with it. She worked this stone with remarkable gusto and great success - more effectively than many of her male peers, we would argue, creating some of her largest and greatest masterpieces at this time, including Family with Dog and two similarly impressive sculptures, Mother and Children, and Birds [1].

When I am doing a carving . . . I subject the stone to the same kinds of movements and scrutiny and lay it on its end and say, well, that would probably present more problems to do it that way. And then I lay it on its side and say, well, there, now that looks like it would be much more suitable for what I have in mind. And I keep turning it over until the idea fully forms in my mind of just how I am going to do it. . .. and one observation that I would like to voice about the two [drawing and sculpture] is that I find the medium of stone, of soapstone in sculpture, easier; it is easier for me to do because as I am working on it, it gets smaller, it’s as though I am chipping away the problems. I am chipping away the different parts of it that should not be there and so it is gradually getting smaller and as the stone gets smaller the parts of it that are left start coming closer to what I want to see there. And so I am kind of removing all the problems, whereas with a piece of paper no matter how long you work on it it’s not getting any smaller. It’s just there [2].

We have always been captivated by Kenojuak’s eloquent descriptions of her working methods. The above quote is from a 1980 interview with Jean Blodgett, in which Kenojuak describes her approach to stone carving while turning a magazine this way and that to further illustrate her method and goes on to contrast working in stone with drawing on paper.

Kenojuak is, of course, best known for her long and much heralded career as a maker of iconic drawings and print images. But as Family with Dog reminds us, Kenojuak has also long been considered an important Kinngait sculptor. This work’s inclusion in the famous Sculpture / Inuit exhibition and various publications suggests that Family with Dog is an icon of Inuit art as well. It is a sculpture imposing in scale, and compact yet beautifully composed and expansive in its forms. And its subject matter could not be more charming. The image undoubtedly held special meaning for Kenojuak, who was devoted to her husband Johnniebo and her children. Family with Dog likely depicts the gift of a puppy to Kenojuak’s older son Arnaqu, with her younger son Adamie looking on.

1. Mother and Children, in the Government of Nunavut Art Collection at the WAG, is illustrated in Darlene Wight, Oviloo Tunnillie: Her Life & Work, (Toronto: Art Canada Institute, 2016), p. 51. Birds, in the Sarick Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario, is illustrated in Jean Blodgett, Kenojuak, (Toronto: Firefly Books / Mintmark Press Ltd., 1985) fig. xxxii, and in Odette Leroux ed., Inuit Women Artists, (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre / Gatineau, Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1994), p. 102.

2. See Jean Blodgett, Kenojuak, 1985, p. 67.