Turtle Reef Sky

1 of 1 | Paul Henry Devoti — Atlantis Studio, my studio home in the pueblo of San Juan de Oriente, NicaraguaThe ocean and the night sky have always been in conversation. Ancient navigators understood this — they used the stars to find the sea, and the sea to understand the stars. Turtle Reef Sky is built on that same understanding, and its form makes it literal.The vessel is dramatic in shape: a wide, dramatically flared rim that opens like a trumpet above a round, full-bodied lower form. That rim is not decoration — it is a second world. The interior of the flare is deep black, covered in fine sgraffito etching alive with pre-Columbian symbols in brilliant metallic color. A gold band marks the horizon — the precise line where the cosmic world above meets the oceanic world below.Below that line, the water. A cerulean and white burnished agua body holds the reef in full life: a large golden sea turtle gliding across the center in unmistakable motion; pink and magenta coral spreading across the base; sea grass, orange coral, red sea fan — the full color world of the reef alive in contemporary metallic pigment.And then the night sky etching descends to the base of the vessel as well, so that the cosmic language brackets the oceanic world from both above and below. The turtles swim in the sea. The sea is held between the stars.This is Atlantis Studio at its most complete conceptual statement: the culture and the ocean, the ancient sky and the living reef — not in dialogue, but unified. One vessel. One world.Dimensions: 16 × 14 × 14 inchesMedium: Ceramic with black sgraffito etching on flared rim, burnished cerulean agua body, slip shaving, deep-relief coral carving, and contemporary metallic pigmentOrigin: Atlantis Studio — studio home of Paul Henry Devoti, pueblo of San Juan de Oriente, NicaraguaEdition: 1 of 1