Shona sculpture sale at Confluence Gallery benefits artists in Zimbabwe

In the midst of poverty, homelessness, economic and political chaos, the Shona people of Zimbabwe manage to create lovely stone sculptures. For the fifth year, Confluence Gallery will offer a weekend exhibit and sale of the sculptures, with all proceeds benefiting the impoverished artists in Zimbabwe.

The exhibit runs Friday, September 12, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturday, Sept. 13, from 10 a.m.-4 p.m.. The stone artwork is brought to Confluence Gallery by Dan Dittrich, a Peshastin resident who has been working on community assistance projects in Zimbabwe for eleven years. He will be at the gallery at 5 p.m., Friday, Sept 12, to talk about the artists represented in the exhibit and the situation in their country
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“Every year we go to Zimbabwe, there are more and more people who come out of the bush and ant us to buy their stone,” Dittrich said. He purchases thousands of pieces each year to support the artists. Dittrich said sale of the sculptures “means everything” to the Shona artists, many of whom have been displaced from farms that were their livelihood. “There are people in the world who have no other means to do anything for a living, and they create beautiful art.”

Shona stone sculpture is a relatively new art form, originating in the 1950s, and is continually evolving. Often working with crude instruments, such as sharpened spoons, the artists carve dense, colorful stone found in Zimbabwe into highly polished, graceful sculptures. Shona sculpture is included in museums and private art collections around the world.

Dittrich first went to Zimbabwe (called Rhodesia before gaining independence) with his family in 1997, when his wife received a Fullbright Scholarship to teach English there. The country was comparatively stable and prosperous at that time, but has become increasingly troubled economically and politically in recent years. Millions of Zimbabwe’s professionals have fled the country, which has an unemployment rate of about 90 percent and is patrolled by troupes of teenage soldiers with guns.

Dittrich hopes to make his annual trip to Zimbabwe this winter, but is weighing the risk of going with his desire to continue helping his friends. “The people of Zimbabwe are the best. They are warm and loving and open, and just trying to do the basic things of life and support their families.” Dittrich encourages anyone who can spare carving implements to bring them to the gallery during the exhibit to donate to the artists.

Zimbabwe's current economic and food crisis, described by some observers as the country's worst humanitarian crisis since independence, has been attributed in varying degrees, to a drought affecting the entire region, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the government's price controls and land reforms.[25]

Life expectancy at birth for males in Zimbabwe has dramatically declined since 1990 from 60 to 37, the lowest in the world. Life expectancy for females is even lower at 34 years.[26] Concurrently, the infant mortality rate has climbed from 53 to 81 deaths per 1,00 Often carving with crude instruments, they shaped the remarkably dense and beautiful stones of the countryside into highly polished sculptures that captured the imagination of art critics and museums around the world. 0 live births in the same period. Currently, 1.8 million Zimbabweans live with HIV.