“These are seabirds. All the birds, they don’t leave each other, you see them in pairs, partners together. If one flies to a new place, the other follows. They are very faithful to each other.”
As a senior man, Sylvester holds very traditional views. Through this piece, he is reinforcing his strongly held feeling of the importance of the strong bond between husband and wife and the importance that they are faithful to each other. Sylvester prides himself as a storyteller, as someone who is a living repository of Shona values, and his sculptures are usually inspired by Shona customs or beliefs.
Springstone is the local name for a hard variety of serpentine stone. It is a particularly good sculpture medium, as it has a dense even internal structure of small grains of rock; it is very popular with Zimbabwe’s most celebrated sculptors.
