Mariposas & Symbols — Symbols in Motion

1 of 1 | Paul Henry Devoti — Atlantis Studio, my studio home in the pueblo of San Juan de Oriente, NicaraguaThere are pieces that whisper the ancient world. Mariposas & Symbols electrifies it.The surface of this vessel is unlike anything else in the Atlantis Studio collection. Across the full body of the piece — its dramatically curved gourd form, its flaring upper register — an extraordinary density of etching and shaving has been worked into the clay. The black slip is carved away in an intricate, lace-like field of ancient symbols, cosmological forms, and 20-day Aztec calendar motifs, exposing the silver-toned native clay beneath. The result is a surface that shimmers — a metallic web of cultural memory that catches and holds light like no painted surface can, because it is not paint. It is the clay itself, revealed.Into that luminous field, Paul Henry Devoti has placed the contemporary vision in its most brilliant form. Cold-painted metallic contemporary pigments fill the central imagery with electric color: a great cosmic creature rendered in gold, teal, crimson and green, its body built from the geometric language of the ancient cultures that inspired it. Above, a monarch butterfly in full orange and black flight crowns the composition, connecting the cosmic to the natural world, the ancient symbol to the living garden.The genius of this piece is in the tension. The etched silver field reads as ancient, as archaeological, as timeless. The cold-painted contemporary color reads as now — bold, graphic, alive. Neither dominates. Together they create a surface that vibrates, that moves, that earns its subtitle: Symbols in Motion.Dimensions: 9 × 7 × 7 inchesMedium: Ceramic with black slip, extensive sgraffito etching and shaving to native clay, and cold-painted contemporary metallic pigmentOrigin: Atlantis Studio — studio home of Paul Henry Devoti, pueblo of San Juan de Oriente, NicaraguaEdition: 1 of 1