Today Pudlo Pudlat is most famous for his ground-breaking and whimsical drawings and prints. He first began drawing in 1959 or 1960; his first prints appeared in 1961 and were included in almost every annual Cape Dorset print collection until 1993. His wonderful drawings in various media were celebrated in the landmark 1990 exhibition and catalogue Pudlo: Thirty Years of Drawing, the first-ever solo exhibition that the National Gallery of Canada mounted for a Canadian Indigenous artist.

A few carvings from the early to mid 1950s have been attributed to him over the years, but it is likely that he did not begin carving until c. 1958. [1] Pudlo was not a prolific sculptor and did not consider himself to be very good at it! However, two striking depictions of owls by him were included in the famous 1971-73 travelling exhibition Sculpture/Inuit (cats. 156, 172), and this very sculpture, Sedna, was published in George Swinton’s Sculpture of the Inuit (fig. 69) and elsewhere. Pudlo’s Sedna is conceived as an immensely powerful spirit, with the formidably compact build of a football linebacker. At the rear, her body transforms into crisply stylized fish-like forms. The work is a potent image, and a highly original contribution by Pudlo to the early 1960s Cape Dorset sculptural aesthetic.