This series, titled Sea Changes, was created in response to the effects of climate change, specifically coral bleaching. It served as a way for me to cope with and empathize with the loss of a natural world that deeply influenced me while growing up in Miami. I employ animism, anthropomorphism, and figuration as relational tools to connect the human-centered Anthropocene with the strange and alien nature of benthic organisms native to the ocean floor.

Cowry, clam, crab, starfish, Strombus, and urchin are recurring motifs—objects that remain as relics of an alien world beyond the shoreline. They function both as biological artifacts and symbols of personal and poetic fascination. Native to the beaches, which form the liminal and constantly shifting divide between land and sea, these forms are often ground into calcium carbonate powder by time and tides. From this powder comes the paint itself: calcium bound with pigment, suspended in binder, and transformed into an opaque palette of finely tuned primary colors.

Tuned by spectrometer, desaturated hues of red, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and magenta form graphic compositions. Each is bounded by lines bent into obtuse curves and sharp angular cuts. There is an intentional obscurity to each image—figures, shells, and forms overlap and fragment. Only when viewed through stained glass objects, which serve as prismatic lenses of interpretation, do distinct images emerge. Each lens reveals a different composition, suggesting three simultaneous yet divergent narratives.

These layered images speak to a shared, universal story found across disparate coastal cultures, arising from deep-rooted collective psychological predispositions. The use of animism reflects this connection: the belief that all entities—animal, plant, mineral, and even oceanic—are imbued with spirit. Derived from the Latin anima, meaning “breath, spirit, life,” animism becomes both a conceptual and visual framework in Sea Changes. It offers a way to reconcile ecological grief with the enduring vitality of the natural world.