The first thing I noticed in the Chitungwiza yard was not a face but a shine. A carver warmed the stone until its skin opened, then worked wax into the green-black body with a rag folded small enough for the thumb. By noon, the figure held light along one shoulder and refused it everywhere else.
The figure arrives by subtraction
There is no paper ground here, no white room asking the work to perform purity. The surface is already a night field: brown seam, amber vein, deep passage, thumbed curve. A head appears because the hand leaves enough darkness intact for the eye to finish the thought.
The best polish is not gloss for its own sake; it is memory made visible where heat, wax, and pressure have agreed.