"Masaai People" by Nelson depicts a family. The figures stand close together, carved as one from a single piece of ebony, in the Masaai conviction that family is above all. Much of Masaai art shows family members supporting one another physically and emotionally, and this piece puts that belief in wood: remove the space between people and what remains is one form.
Nelson was raised in the Masaai tribe in Kenya and is famous for his painstaking detail. He carves in ebony, the hardest of mediums, because he believes challenge is essential to an artist's work.
