Echo
Echo
17” x 19”
Mixed media: wildebeest horns, skull, wasp nest, silver, black sapphires, driftwood
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An Echo in the Shell
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“I plunged my hands into the earth, and brought close to me,
last vestiges of life from our natural world, absorbing what remained of their memory.
Clutching an abandoned shell, I opened my lungs to the biosphere , and holding it to my mouth, I blew, declaring our existence.
Through the empty chambers, our lonely voices echoed, amidst the sound of distant waters that faintly called “come home”.
But the ocean in retreat had swelled, rushing back with a deafening roar, and I was splintered by the force.
Through the cracks of my fractured body, the vibrations of the natural world began to seep - sharing wonder and sorrow and the whispering of doom….” ​​
This sculpture emerged from my journey through poisoning and the experience of “reconnection” to the natural world is at the heart of this piece.
It depicts a woman, sitting on the ground with her head looking downwards between her two raised knees.
Her body is formed from the horns and skull of a wildebeest, turned upside down. The dark, steep curves of the horns form her knees, spread wide apart, as her legs narrow, touching down to rest upon the horn tips.
The large and empty eye sockets of the skull, are placeholders for her arms.
The tip of the skull’s nose has been sharply cut and forms the opening for her long neck to protrude. Deep inside, we can just glimpse some of the small twisting roots that form the vessels of her heart.
Lining the front of her neck, is a curving trachea made from a translucent and carved sea worm tube.
Her featureless, bisected face is made from bone and her hair is formed, in striking contrast, from rough dark tree bark.
Her head is wide open at the top and her brain is exposed. It is formed from the cellular remains of a poisoned wasp nest, where life was only just beginning to emerge.
Some of the cells are still covered with the translucent protective domes of the pupae. Looking closely, we can see one tiny wasp was just beginning to hatch, and making its first journey out of its cell, when this nest was devastated.
But amongst its cells, the light of the universe still shimmers with embedded sterling silver hexagons and glimmering black star sapphires.
She is hanging her head in sorrow, as the ocean sings to her, through a lovely tiny abalone shell that is fixed upon her ear.
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There is another shell affixed to her lower back, as the call of the ocean also resonates through her womb.
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It is a very large oyster shell, adorned with barnacles and silver and topaz, that highlights the rich patina of raw sienna that colours much of its surface.
Lifting it off, we discover behind it, a large beaver skull, turned nose down, that is her womb. A sterling silver urinary tract, tarnished and patinaed, is embedded in it.
The bulbous bladder protrudes from the nasal passages at the bottom of the skull, and behind two hidden panels are her kidneys,
Removing the womb from the sculpture, we may view its backside, which displays an elongated silver filigree door, framed by a replica of a seagull’s bottom jaw, and with the beaver’s hearing cochlea for the ovaries, adhered to the top of the door. A small window in the middle, frames a gold dyed pearl that will be discovered to be the top of a silver and adorned toxic sperm that contains a tiny vial of mercury. It is seated in the vaginal nasal passages, and may be lifted out when the door is removed.
Deeper inside the cranial cavity of the skull, is a preserved cicada and a depiction of the Little Dipper with the North Star, made from silver and black star sapphires, are embedded in the walls of the cavern.
In the larger cranial cavity of the Wildebeest skull, are the rest of her organs. Her bowel, made from twisting raw sienna and dark brown roots, fills the bottom.
Above it, her stomach, pancreas, and spleen, are revealed, made from roots and mushrooms and adorned with silver and topaz. A single geode, cut in two, forms her liver, with an embedded tear drop of bronze that forms her gallbladder. On its inside, we may view the lovely crystalline interior.
Photo Credits: Marina Dempster