I Woke Up and There They Were: Contemporary Clay Sculpture, African Man's Face

This man is part of a series where man/nature intersect. His African face is topped by horns and his skin shows a design based on animal hide. 

When Covid shut down the figure sculpture class I was in, I ended up alone* at the kitchen table, without a model. I'd been envisioning pieces where people grew horns and this is one of them. I'm not interested in portraying devilish figures, and it turns out it's difficult to make horns that are clearly related to animals and not devils.

Portraits (faces) are surprisingly sensitive, meaning that a small change in the sculpting creates a whole new emotional message. The expression on this face made me imagine that he woke up, looked in the mirror, and he found he had had an unexpected metamorphosis. He's pretty chill, but a bit disbelieving, that he now has horns.

* Although there were no fellow sculptors, I was actually rarely alone because my husband and I were living in my childhood home taking care of my dad. He sat for hours at the other end of the table and watched me work. It motivated him to try his hand at throwing pots again, which he'd done very skillfully in the 70s and the 90s.

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Painted clay, 10 inches wide, 7 inches deep, and 14 inches tall.