Sunset Reef

1 of 1 | Paul Henry Devoti — Atlantis Studio, my studio home in the pueblo of San Juan de Oriente, NicaraguaStanding over two feet tall, Sunset Reef commands a room the way a great painting commands a wall — except this is clay, and everything you see on its surface was put there after the fire had already done its work.This is one of the rarest expressions in the Atlantis Studio collection: a piece that is entirely cold-painted. There is no fired slip color on this vessel. Every zone of color — the blazing orange-red sunset fading to gold on the tall narrow neck, the deep cobalt ocean that dominates the body, the warm sandy gold of the sculpted seafloor base — is contemporary pigment applied to bare clay after firing. The form was conceived, sculpted, shaved, and etched before the kiln, and the kiln fired the architecture. Then the artist returned, and painted the world.That world is extraordinary. The deep blue ocean body holds a full reef ecosystem: a mahi-mahi at the upper register; an orange sea turtle shaved into the clay, gliding past; a magnificent purple sea fan coral rising from the center in carved relief; a silver grouper hovering in the mid-water; starfish at the base. At the base, the sandy seafloor is deeply carved and built up in raw textured clay — a different surface entirely from the smooth ocean above.The neck completes the composition: orange deepening to red at the very lip — the colors of a Pacific sunset, the sky above the water that the reef has never seen but the vessel makes visible.Cold-painted. Fully sculpted. Over two feet of contemporary underwater utopia.Dimensions: 26 × 18 × 18 inchesMedium: Ceramic with sculpted clay, deep-relief carving, sgraffito etching, and entirely cold-painted contemporary pigment — height: over 2 feetOrigin: Atlantis Studio — studio home of Paul Henry Devoti, pueblo of San Juan de Oriente, NicaraguaEdition: 1 of 1