An illuminating glimpse into the South’s early, and at times rather clumsy, involvement in art production in the North is the present print. Despite its title — likely assigned by a qallunaat individual involved in the printmaking process — the work is pushed toward a reading that Pudlo did not endorse. The artist, himself, discussing the source drawing with Marion Jackson, described the figure not as a spirit or shamanistic being but as a woman holding “little brooms and a dustpan” and later, in the same conversation, as a “backscratcher and seaweed” [1]. When asked directly whether she was meant to represent a shaman, Pudlo bluntly replied, “No, I don’t think of her as a shaman, maybe only you do” [2]. Regardless of whether one reads the imagery as earthly or supernatural, the golden yellow ink and spare, emphatic design give the print a striking visual presence.

1. Pudlo Pudlat, as cited in Jackson, Pudlo: Thirty Years of Drawing, 1990,

p. 105.

2. Ibid., p. 51

References: This print is reproduced in Jean Blodgett, Grasp Tight the Old Ways: Selections from the Klamer Family Collection of Inuit Art, (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1983), cat. 95, p. 138, as well as in Marie Routledge and Marion E. Jackson, Pudlo: Thirty Years of Drawing, (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1990), fig. 6, p. 20. The drawing Woman with Utensils is reproduced as well, cat. 8., p. 105. This image is reproduced in Helga Goetz, The Inuit Print, international travelling exhibition, (Ottawa: National Museums of Canada and the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, 1977), pl. 22, p. 74. Interestingly, Goetz notes, and Mame Jackson also observes (citing Pudlo, op. cit., p. 20), that the “keyhole” shape is simply beads on the front of the amautiq. Goetz further remarks that the objects in the woman’s hands are subject to varying interpretations and may be seen as a key and a door handle.

ND