John Pangnark's sculpture occupies a distinctive place within the highly reductive tradition of Arviat carving. In Figure Looking Up, the human body has been pared down to a sequence of swelling, sensuous forms, conventional anatomy giving way to posture, volume and the weight of the stone. There are no real articulated arms or legs. Instead, the figure rises from a broad, squared base into a rounded torso and head, the face tilted dramatically backward.

Pangnark achieves this upward gesture with remarkably little descriptive information. A shallow incision suggests the mouth, while the remaining features are barely touched into the surface.Yet the backward tilt of the head is enough to animate the entire figure. The body seems to gather itself upward, its rounded planes carrying the eye from the base through the torso and into the lifted face. It is an eloquent example of how little Pangnark needed to suggest a human body in full expression.

The surface retains dense traces of carving and abrasion, its surface is scored and abraded with overlapping tool marks, some shallow and feathery, others deeper and more deliberate. Rather than diminishing the sculpture's simplicity, these marks emphasize the physical process by which the form was released from the material.

MBL