Lighting It Up

I've been doing a lot of experimenting in the studio with the cuttlefish bone. I've been cutting, carving, resin pouring, shaving, and accidentally dropping these beauties for the past two months or so. I think I’m on to something extraordinary!

I was in the middle of carving an exceptionally large cuttlebone when I noticed how beautiful it looked when I held it up to my studio bench light. The yellowish coloration of the cuttlefish bone struck me first, then the change in variation of pigments from the carved sections sealed the deal - I was going to make something with this! And the light that I used was not even yellow, it was an LED-type light. All of that gorgeous color comes from the layers of bone. For some reason, there is a natural change in color from the left to the right side of the bone.

I’ve started holding all of my pre-carved cuttlebones up to bright light and discovered each one is completely unique. Like a human fingerprint or the stripes of a tiger, each cuttlefish bone has subtle differences in pigment changes as well as bone layering.

Puffer in Progress

I’ve been spending a lot of time researching different types of patterning and coloration of coral reef fish. Recently I’ve gotten into pufferfish and boxfish. When I go snorkeling or diving in reef beds I always end up following these swarms of colorful fish (probably scaring them half to death in the process). I’ll tell you a secret about the coloration of this piece…. It’s not really based off of a pufferfish, but a boxfish! I thought it would be a fun experiment to combine the two qualities of the infamously spiky pufferfish and the vibrant boxfish. Both are very poisonous, by the way, and yet extremely necessary for the coral ecosystem.