"My encounter with Cape Dorset began in 2004 by experiencing and falling in love with Shuvinai Ashoona's large-scale tiled drawing depiction of it…
On November 5th 2012, Pat Feheley, Pamela Meredith, Johannes Zits and I flew from Toronto to Ottawa, then Iqualuit and further north until we touched down in Cape Dorset. On each leg of the journey, we were ushered into progressively smaller planes with yet colder cabins.
Upon arrival, Bill Ritchie (the studio manager at the Kinngait Studio Co-Op) helped me settle down to work among highly respected artists whom I had the honour of previously meeting in Toronto: Shuvinai Ashoona, Itee Pootoogook, Tim Pitsiluak, Jutai Toonoo, and Ohotaq Mikkigak.
The first drawing I attempted is entitled Ice Scraping Drawing Earth. Made with unrestrained gestures and utmost speed, my hands gripped five or so coloured pencils as I lashed at the paper. Making this drawing helped articulate my awe at the elemental gestures, movements and energy of ice moving over land, evidenced by the gouging marks that I saw from the plane's bird's eye view. Two other works, Wind Drawing Water and Light Drawing Cosmos ensued shortly thereafter. (Images of these works are available on request)
The next set of drawings, Nuna/Land, done with ink and brush, depict chunks of rocks that I first saw in Shuvinai's Composition and then walked on in real life.
The Nuna drawings were followed by the Sea Dogs series. While negotiating the rocky and half-frozen shoreline, I recalled Jimmy Manning once telling me how grown-ups warn youngsters to stay away from the edge flow or else sea dogs would grab and pull them into the water. I imagined the existence of such creatures and their eyes all trained on me as I ventured so dangerously close to the open body of freezing dark water.” – Ed Pien