Ariel and the Stormy Afternoon

I bought this planter a year ago at an estate sale on Whitland Avenue. It was pushed under a table in the garage, and I was lucky no one else had seen it. Here is a closer view-

I believe the face, half hidden ,is that of the sprite" Ariel" -imprisoned inside a tree by an evil witch. In Shakespeare's "The Tempest",Prospero, the exiled Duke, frees the sprite, and Ariel becomes his servant and a conjurer of storms.


And here is Nature, imitating Art on a warm Tennessee spring afternoon. Ariel could not have done it better.