Abandon Ship, epoxy and abaca sculpture, 45W x 33 H x 2.5 D

I thought up the title for this sculpture after reading The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway’s classic novel about perseverance. Like the protagonist in Hemingway’s novel who despite having spent years as an accomplished fisherman, hasn’t caught a fish is 86 days, I worked on the idea to combine epoxy, a substrate that can be installed in a heavy traffic area, with abaca, a natural fiber that holds the pigment beautifully, allowing the colors to swim in the liquid epoxy as it searches for its ultimate shape and form, for four + years, on top of my 35+ years as a working artist. After many failures, or “2000 ways how not to make an epoxy and abaca sculpture,” I discovered a process that works.
Created in the tradition of art nouveau, an artistic style that celebrates the whimsical rhythms and shapes of nature, this sculpture mimics ocean waves, full of energy, emotion, and like real waves, impossible to fully control, kind of like Hemingway himself, and ok, kind of me too.