BENEATH THE SURFACE

I have always been drawn to the water and have always lived within 10 minutes or less of some form of body of water. But I'm far from a mermaid. I know enough to save myself and it ends there, yet I like going in the ocean, jet skiing, and have done rafting and tubing. I must have a death wish. I would love to scuba dive, but alas, I don't think my nerves are that close to steel, but the depths fascinate me so. Exhilarating. Fascinating. Yet very beautifully haunting. It was a week or two ago while watching PBS that there was a piece about an artist,  Jason deCaires Taylor, and I was sucked in to the next two hours. Jason is a British sculptor and creator of the world's first underwater sculpture park, The Molinere Underwater Sculpture Park. Taylor integrates his skills as a sculptor, marine conservationist, underwater photographer and a scuba instructor into each of his projects. 

The sculptures offer a mysterious, ephemeral encounter and fleeting glimmers of another world where art develops from the effects of nature on the efforts of man. The best part of the art installations and site-specific locations, it is subtly integrating aspects of street art but also encouraging marine life, to promote ocean conservation. They are designed to act as artificial reefs, attracting corals increasing biomass and aggregating fish species while crucially diverting tourist away from fragile natural reefs and thus providing space for natural rejuvenation. Another cool aspect I learned, all the sculptures were modeled after real people Taylor knows, and residents, current and past, from his town he lives in.

Taylor's art installations changes over time with the effects of their environment. The factors create a living aspect to the works, which would be impossible to reproduce artificially. As time passes and the works develop biological growth, they redefine the underwater landscape, evolving within the narrative of nature...and promote whole new coral reefs one day helping out our oceans.

The sculpture are actual life castings and cast into concrete, and where they are subsumed by the sea and transformed from lifeless stone into vibrant habitats for coral, crustaceans, fish populations and other creatures. The result: Enigmatic, haunting and colorful commentaries about our transient existence, the sacredness of the ocean and it's breathtaking power of regeneration. Some days life and some people of this planet still amaze me.