The Sculpture at the River Market show and sale starts this coming Friday evening and runs through next Sunday.  To mark this, the October Sculpture Vulture is highlighting sculptures from previous shows.

Today’s is Collen Nyanhongo’s Resting Angel.  Carved out of stone, this features both rough and polished surfaces of a variety of textures. On one side, it appears that an angel’s wing is emerging from a stone pillar.  The other side depicts a profile of the angel’s face in the same shape as the wing.

Collen Nyanhongo’s homeland is Zimbabwe, which means “large house of stone.” He is a member of the most significant family of artists in Zimbabwe and learned the craft of using simple hand tools to sculpt his stones from his father, Claude Nyanhongo, a first-generation artist who helped create the Zimbabwe Sculpture Movement fifty years ago. The Zimbabwe Sculpture Movement is heralded as the most prominent art form to emerge from Africa in the 20th century.

Forging his own vision from his powerful artistic roots, Collen Nyanhongo blends traditional figurative form into metaphorical abstract expression that transcends his past and establishes him as an eminent world artist whose work has been honored in Zimbabwe, France, Netherlands, Denmark, Australia, Holland, England, Switzerland, Germany, South Africa and the United States.

Collen sculpts in all sizes, from a 15 ton marble stone for a public art project in Fort Collins, Colorado to smaller pieces that demand to be held and caressed. He prefers working with hard stones like Springstone, Serpentine and Lopidolite and ships them in from Zimbabwe quarries to wherever he is living and working.