"Little things interest him as passionately as great. His little friends - the birds, the beast, and the fish -seem to interest him so much that he models them oftener than he does humans. Few sculptors are hunters or fishermen. They would dislike mutilating the living forms they seek to realize. Rather they go into the bush and along the riverside to observe the creatures as they truly are.
They tame those captured young, and feel and make friends with them. The eagle and the parrot are frequently modelled; the former because of its beauty, elegance, and national significance; the latter because of its friendliness, colorfulness, and talkativeness.
The duck is a neglected bird, perhaps because it is dirty, eats anything, and walks awkwardly, which are not it's fault.
Sometimes when the sculptor is less serious, he thinks of humorous figures. He may mould a man who eats too much and gets an awkwardly protruding stomach; he may feature an owl whose giant eyes on a little head provides a means of loosening tension for those whose personal troubles need to be laughed off.
And the wonders of it is that the sculptor himself does not know why these forms make people laugh. All that attracts him to these creatures is merely humanity. He does not mould the owl because it is ugly, but to show how wonderful nature is. There is the beautiful parrot or the majestic eagle, the huge elephant, or the pretty woman. Then, he stops to ask, is all nature like these?
Is it all beauty and majesty and bigness and prettiness? He sees the contrast right there in the same nature. He models the ugly too-- and the pitiful, the foolish, the neglected. Then he draws a moral that all these creatures should be loved for one thing or another." Culled from Mbonu Ojike, My Africa (London: Blandford Press, 1955), 178 - 179.
Whenever you feel like destroying a native artwork, think of the Igbo/African sculptor.
By Angelo Chidi Unegbu (04/08/2021)
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