Nicotye Mills

Nicotye Mills was born near Kimmirut, NU, 1936 and moved to Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, with her family in the 1950s. In the late 1960s, Mills relocated from from Kinngait, NU, to Moose Factory, ON, where she married and lived for nearly 30 years. She returned to Kinngait in 1993, and, in her mid-fifties, she began to bring her first drawings to the Co-op. 

The daughter of well-known graphic artist Tudlik and sister of sculptor Latcholassie Akesuk, Mills takes her preferred subject matter—loons and owls—from her family members, both of whom are known for their depictions of the same in prints and stone. Mills often took these animals beyond the page, featuring them on her intricate appliqué wall hangings. 

The print of her drawing Bird Song (1996), translated by printmaker Niveaksie Quvianuqtuliaq, is a highlight of her series of anthropomorphized birds from the mid 1990s. The print and the title form a jocular pun, depicting a snowy-owl nonchalantly playing an accordion. Her other print from the same graphics collection, Following the Route ([1996]), in which an owl with regal posture ferries a seal by canoe, shows a glimpse of a developing narrative imagination that was on full display in her later print Fisherman's Dilemma (1997).

Mills's late-blooming artistic career was cut short when she passed away in 2003. Her prints were featured in the Cape Dorset Annual Graphics Collection in 1995, 1996, 1997 and 1998, and her drawings were displayed in galleries in Montreal and alongside the drawings of Sheokjuk Etidloosie in San Francisco.