Whale Fall Sculpture

A whale carcass takes 50-80 years to decompose which is approximately the same amount of time some whales live. As this time passes, the carcass supports a huge ecosystem. It becomes a postmortem symbiosis between the living and death – the dead providing shelter and food for the living… There are 3 stages of this postmortem sinking process- which is known as a “Whale Fall”. The scavenger stage : where fish strip away the tissue- within hours there can be hundreds of hag fish feasting on the carcass… Hag fish are eel like fish which produce mass amounts of mucus –this stage has been described as looking like a Medusa head covered in mucus and flesh… Next is The enrichment opportunist stage: where worms take up residency in the remains. 30-40 thousand per square meter . It has been compared to a field of white grass covering the carcass…. Last is the sulfur loving stage: said to look like a skeleton draped in polar bear fir… bacteria finishes everything off. There are certain “scavenger” creatures believed to only be found on a dead whale. The rest of the time it is thought perhaps they are fugitive species sort of floating or drifting … but when the FALL happens they feed and reproduce… I have been exploring the idea of the cyclical process of life and death and more specifically the degeneration and regeneration which takes place within that cycle. By working towards making an enigmatic composite installation with economy of form, gesture and visual weight I dissolve the direct link from which my work is derived in order to emphasize a metaphorical equivalent. The suspension from ceiling and the progression to the ground emphasizes scale and a sense of falling or crashing. My working process is parallel to the grittiness of the physical progression of death and the scavenging that takes place in the animal kingdom. The deconstruction and reconstruction of form is similar to the deterioration and resilience of life through death.

Sculpture:Plaster on Other

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:5 W x 10 H x 5 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.