David Blas gives this frog a drummer's grin, wide-eyed and mid-song, one webbed hand raised to strike the small painted tumba drum tucked under its arm. The pose has real rhythm to it, body coiled forward, head tipped back, as if caught on the downbeat.
Frogs carried their own weight in ancient Mexico, long linked to rain and renewal, their croaking read as a call for the rains to come. There's something fitting in that connection here, a small creature summoning music the way its ancestors once summoned water.
The dotted, vein-like patterning across the body ripples in reds, greens, and blues, catching the light differently as the eye follows each limb down to bright, clawed feet.
Carved by hand from copal wood, true to Oaxaca's alebrije tradition from start to finish.
