A quarter century of connection with the best Shona sculptors keeps Carmel ahead of the game.

When Rohana LoSchiavo, director at Gallery Sur in Carmel, unlocked the front door on a recent morning, she saw a woman looking at a sculpture almost in tears. “It touched my heart,” the woman said, and LoSchiavo only nodded because she’s seen that reaction to a Shona sculpture before: How do they get so much emotion from a rock?

“We are ahead globally, and we are ahead in Northern California,” says Braden Coolidge, who established this unique Carmel-Zimbabwe connection that makes Monterey County the best place on the West Coast to buy Shona sculpture – a modern Zimbabwean stone carving movement named after the Shona tribe.

Almost 30 new pieces will be revealed at an annual party on Saturday, Oct. 9, replenishing the collection that has been a local pride for over 25 years. They will sell in a blink, no doubt. “It’s addictive,” Coolidge says in a tone of warning. He offers a count of his own Shona pieces after going mentally through his hallway.

It started when Coolidge went to Zimbabwe for a program which turned out to be a sham, and returned with a passion for regional art that creates emotions in raw stone. “They are not only a dozen sculptors from Zimbabwe,” he says about the artists such as the Nyanhongo family, his personal friends. “They are the top dozen sculptors from Zimbabwe, among the best sculptors in the world.”

There have been changes over the years, LoSchiavo says. There are more colorful stones, like rose quartz or lepidolite. There are also more pieces by women this time, which is great and surprising, LoSchiavo explains, because in this very traditional society only a few women come up on top. Their talent shines in pieces such as “Feeling Good” by Agnes Nyanhongo – the serene faces she carves becoming the face of the movement.

The most basic element of earth turned into art by really sensitive people, LoSchiavo summarizes. If you went to Zimbabwe, you would see hundreds of people working with stone. They find it on farms or take boulders from the mountains. But not many artists can take the time to work through a huge amount of detail. Because there’s a gallery like this, the artists have confidence that pieces will sell, and they can take an extra two weeks to take it to the next level.

“We have a wonderful group of collectors,” LoSchiavo says. There are people that come to every year “just for the party” and notoriously go back home with “one more.”

“Each piece is a new idea,’’ LoSchiavo says. “It starts with observation of life, of people, of gestures. That’s true of all art, especially sculpture.”

THE SHONA STONE SCULPTURE SHOW opens Saturday, Oct. 9 with a reception from 4-7pm. Gallery Sur, 6th between Dolores and Lincoln, Carmel. 626-2615, gallerysur.com