Turquoise Turtle Bay

1 of 1 | Paul Henry Devoti — Atlantis Studio, my studio home in the pueblo of San Juan de Oriente, NicaraguaThere is something in the human body that responds to a sea turtle in water. Something older than language, older than culture — a recognition that crosses every boundary we have drawn between ourselves and the natural world. Turquoise Turtle Bay is built to reach that place.The background is water — not a representation of water, but water made clay. The turquoise drip technique, polished and burnished until the white clay flows through the teal like actual light through actual ocean, creates a surface of such naturalistic depth that the turtles appear to be swimming through something real. This is the agua technique at its most refined: not decorative, but environmental. The vessel becomes the bay.Into that living water, two sea turtles are shaved. One warm amber and brown — the hawksbill coloring, its shell given the particular geometry of the real animal — moving upward toward light. One teal and iridescent green — a different species, its shell rendered in the lustrous color of a green turtle at depth — gliding the opposite arc. The two together create a slow, ancient choreography across the curved surface of the vessel.Where other Atlantis works use contemporary color as bold graphic statement, here the pigments are deployed with a painter's eye for realism. The turtles in Turquoise Turtle Bay do not symbolize the ocean. They inhabit it.Paul Henry Devoti has said that the connection between sea turtles and humans is embedded in us all. This is the piece that proves it — because no one looks at it without feeling it.Dimensions: 7 × 6 × 6 inchesMedium: Ceramic with burnished turquoise drip agua slip, slip shaving, and contemporary realistic pigmentOrigin: Atlantis Studio — studio home of Paul Henry Devoti, pueblo of San Juan de Oriente, NicaraguaEdition: 1 of 1