Lot 91A
LUKTA QIATSUK (1928-2004)
Additional Images
Note:
According to Norman Vorano, “...evidence suggests that, with the possible exception of gift cards or fabric printing, stencil was used only as a supplement to relief block printing. [...]Kananginak Pootoogook recalled that only after getting two more helpers in the studio, Lukta Qiatsuk and Iyola Kingwatsiak, did Houston ask Kananginak to move into what he described, in highly qualified terms, as a more ‘delicate material’ like stencil. After Houston’s return from Japan in the spring of 1959, stenciling assumed a more central role in the Cape Dorset studio... By the end of that year 19 of the total 40 prints in the studio’s 1959 annual collection were listed as “sealskin stencils,” although in reality the artists used wax stiffened paper or discarded X-ray film, as sealskin proved too costly and was unsuitable as a stencil medium.
Inuit Prints: Japanese Inspiration, Early Printmaking in the Canadian Arctic, Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2011, pg. 55.