Sea Turtle Under Stars

1 of 1 | Paul Henry Devoti — Atlantis Studio, my studio home in the pueblo of San Juan de Oriente, Nicaragua

Some pieces divide the world into its essential layers and ask you to see how they hold each other. Sea Turtle Under Stars does exactly that — in a vessel small enough to hold in two hands.

Three worlds, stacked. At the base, burnished bronze — warm, metallic, the color of the earth at its most elemental. Above it, the ocean: a deep burnished turquoise and blue field, rich and luminous, the signature Atlantis agua technique in its most saturated expression. And crowning the vessel, the night sky — a brilliant black lip alive with etched and painted starlight, multicolored dots of white, gold, and soft color scattered across the dark surface like the actual night sky over the Pacific.

Between ocean and stars, the sea turtle floats. Shaved directly into the turquoise clay body, its olive-green shell rendered in meticulous carved scutes outlined in cream, its black-spotted head and flippers given the genuine texture of a real green turtle. A purple sea anemone blooms at the base. Sea grass reaches along the vessel's side. The reef lives in the same space as the stars, held together by the turtle moving through both.

The contemporary metallic color applied to the exposed clay surface brings every element to brilliant life — the color and night sky union built into the physical form of the vessel itself.

Dimensions: 8 × 6 × 6 inches

Medium: Ceramic with burnished turquoise slip, bronze metallic base, black burnished lip, sgraffito etching, slip shaving, and contemporary metallic pigment

Origin: Atlantis Studio — studio home of Paul Henry Devoti, pueblo of San Juan de Oriente, Nicaragua

Edition: 1 of 1