Ocean Creatures

In the 1990's, I had a job where occasionally I'd look out the window to the Boston harbor, and see the cormorants. They'd lift their wings to the air the sun to the environment around them. I may not have been alone in feeling a sadness in that picturesque view. Creatures like those birds have no choice but to exist in the polluted waters, the polluted air. They derive no benefit from all those massive chemicals washing downstream towards them. They must only survive, and spread their wings.

Even before the catastrophe that is now the Gulf of Mexico, (but was already a catastrophe in making as there was a 70 mile wide dead zone created by chemical runoff,) I thought of a very frought design* indicating my tension and sadness about the environment, specifically the Ocean. There is something so intimate about diving or swimming in an ocean to survive. I tried, but could not make any design so loaded with feeling work. I hope at sometime to be able to. I'll call those pieces "Killing the Ocean." The below piece, called "Small Hope" is the only thing I could get going on. It's more designy, and is less about hope than a letting go of total despair. It is the only thing I could do. Hence the name. Not that the design itself says "hope."

I won't be able to get this piece finished in time for the May challenge. The center tentacle area is to be cast in bronze, along with the circle beside it. The 2 side pieces will be in silver.



*This design is for the May challenge on the Metalsmith's thread. It was for an Ocean creature, highly polished. Not sure the tentacle piece will get highly polished, but maybe!