Sea Changes

You walk into the space and there are six square paintings hung with six sculptures standing at the face of each painting. Masses of calcium carbonate coral boulders sit as the base of each sculpture. A curved and colorless aluminum rod protrudes from the base up overhead suspending stained glass objects. Pieces of transparent red, green and blue colored glass are affixed to various types of shells, each correlating to the content of its respective painting. Cowry, clam, crab, starfish, strumbus and urchin are objects remnant of an alien world beyond the shoreline; objects of personal and poetic fascination native to the shifting divide, beaches, where they are crushed to calcium carbonate powder by time and tides. From this powder comes the paint; calcium bound with pigment and suspended in a binder, used to form an opaque palette of perfectly tuned primary colors. Tuned by a spectrometer, desaturated hues of red, yellow, green, cyan, blue and magenta compose graphic forms, bound by lines bent to obtuse curvatures and acute cuts of shape. There is an obscurity to each image as figures, shells and shapes overlap. It is only when one glances through the stained glass object that distinct imagery is found. Each lens offers a different perspective, dividing the painting into three different images. Images that speak of a universal narrative shared amongst seemingly different coastal cultures, a narrative stemming from innate universal psychological predispositions. “Animism is the belief that all things in the universe, including animals, plants, rocks, rivers, and humans, have a spiritual essence and are animated. The word "animism" comes from the Latin word anima, which means ‘breath, spirit, life’".