Bird and horse head optical illusion figure stone from Colorado

Bird and horse head optical illusion figure stone, worked in jasper
Chris Schram find, Westminster, Colorado

This may be interpreted as a "Two headed sculpture" with two creatures combined and facing away from each other, bird to left and horse head to right.

Polyiconic sculpture: The bird may also be interpreted as a "horse head in right 3/4 profile," looking slightly to the right, while the bird faces left. The bird's beak is the right ear of the horse icon. The "breath of life," the horse's nostrils, would be on the bird's tail as seen here. The bird's protruding tail is the muzzle of the horse figure. The horse's head image is cropped at the animal's neck, the rounded edge on the left side of the photo.

KalahariRose original line art approximates the depiction of the horse head in this figure stone

This is the second figure stone identified by Chris which has revealed horse imagery as a part of polyiconic "optical illusion" where two icons exist simultaneously but vary depending on how one focuses visual attention on them.

In this perspective, the bird's beak may be seen as the chin of a human "skull face," just as seen in two other figure stones presented on this blog.

These three figure stones are from Hemet, California, Westminster, Colorado and Zanesville, Ohio, implying a broad area of geographic coverage by the cultures which practiced these art traditions.

Possible human facial profile worked on to the bird's belly, where the bird's tail feathers are the neck of the head in the facial profile.