Oceana
Music is the first of the great whale sculptures, carved during my studio residency on San Juan Island, WA. The fluke pattern is depicted after a female Humpback whale known to whale watchers in the Gulf of Maine.
This rorqual species exhibits an otherworldly anatomy of pleats; striations of elastic tissues that billow in fluid form. The colonies of barnacles that inhabit the lower rostrum are comparable to encampments staked upon peaks, worn into grooves by many seasons of brine.
Unusual angles of depiction deliver the whale from familiarity, renewing the subject matter as an abstraction. Such artistic license provides opportunity to explore marine physiology often foreign to the terrestrial observer.