“The beauty of art has the ability to draw people in and touch the soul in ways that education becomes seamless and brings many dividends in public awareness. No time should be lost in bringing greater awareness to the harm and even eradication of sea turtles and indeed, all marine life, caused by oil spills, pollution, and trash, almost exclusively brought on by human action. The continuance of all these occurrences, only serve to remind and further highlight how fragile and vulnerable our wild native spaces are. I feel a special need to bring attention to how our actions negatively affect ocean life.” Kathleen Sheard
When the Cycle of Life: Sea Turtle Glass Sculpture – Environmental Art Education Project is finished, the Facebook site for the sculpture will be converted to sea turtle conservation articles and other kiln formed and cast glass sea turtle sculptures. These I will be doing, to support and educate about sea turtle conservation. The images here are the first of the new conservation pieces. This is “extra” so this sea turtle is worked on late at night or sometimes on weekends, and I started this clay last October. The model has gone through several revisions. The title of the sculpture is “Your Killing Me”. It will be a mostly clear two part hollow piece. In all of the conservation sculptures to come I will be using, for the most part, scrap glass I have accumulated over the years with a 90COE. This will include sheet, frit, billet, and patties that preceded billets.
Shown is the clay model ready for plaster. I did do a splash coat, but just showing the final plaster mother mold of the carapace section. This was wet clay, again re purposed, and left over from another project. I did not want to use a ton of clay so I have been using found or borrowed objects to build the clay on. I have pre fused the clear carapace and plastron sections and will be cutting them apart and setting them in place. Also some pre fused flipper parts. The starting of the fill in the plastron is with sheet glass in the incorporated base to support the sculpture.
