Joe David is among the most accomplished carvers on the Northwest Coast and has played a major role in revitalizing customary Nuu-chah-nulth art. David belongs to the cohort of Northwest Coast Indigenous artists that included Bill Reid (Haida), Robert Davidson (Haida), Marvin Oliver (Quinault/Isleta Pueblo), and Nathan Jackson (Tlingit), who began studying historic objects in the 1960s with non-Indigenous artist and scholar Bill Holm to reconstruct 19th-century formal artistic styles. A master of many different regional styles, David often incorporates humour and playful pop culture references into his work.

A long history of dollmaking on the Northwest Coast often links the practice to medicine men and healing. By the late 19th century, carvers producing objects for curio shops began making human figures, often mounted on bases, to sell to steamship tourists alongside baskets and model totem poles. David riffs on this practice by presenting a diminutive female doll with a human-hair topknot, beaded necklace, and deer hide dress. He carves the doll in alder, gives it a mask-like face, and inlays bead eyes. He also gives the figure a mischievous, knowing smirk that invites conversation and speculation from the viewer.