I talked to Gedion Nyanhongo at the Columbus Arts Festival 2023.

Tell me about your art journey.

I feel like I was born for this. My dad was one of the first artist in Zimbabwe, Africa, to do this kind of work. I grew up wanting to be like my dad. He opened his studio to teach me at a very young age. I don’t know anything else. I can’t wait to wake up and find what is in the stone. These are hand carved stones, no power tools, from start to finish. The natural form of the stone will tell me or give me a hint of what is inside and what it wants to be. It will look like something before you even take anything away. My job is to find out what that something is. Then, once I figure that out, I have a vision of how the piece is going to be finished before I take nothing away from the stone. It will be out of that vision that I chisel out what doesn’t belong.