Watch-dog
The piece is worked from an entire stump, seventy-two centimetres. The lower part keeps bark and root, a base left close to its found state; the upper part is carved until a seated beast emerges, gathered on its supports, muzzle raised and pierced with two nostrils. The reading hovers between dog and bear; the title settles it toward guarding. A natural fissure runs down the muzzle and divides the figure into two slopes: on one side the smoothed, waxed, honey-toned wood; on the other the dark roughness of the preserved bark. The stump stays legible beneath the form given to it.
Threshold figures run through sculpture, from the paired Assyrian lions to the Celtic heads planted at village entrances. The paradox of the title does the rest: watch-dog, an almost trivial phrase, for an old tutelary register. A domestic name, a guardian presence.