Amelia Urry looks at the work of artist Courtney Mattison, who constructs ceramic coral reefs:
Mattison’s newest piece, Our Changing Seas III, depicts a hurricane-spiral of bleached corals coalescing to a bright center. You can read it as a message of hope or one of impending doom, depending on your disposition, but Mattison tries to stay on the cautiously sunny side. “I really hope I’m not building monuments to reefs, memorials of their demise,” she told Grist over the phone. “I would really like these to be celebrations of them — but time will tell.”
The work has a larger mission:
At the heart of Courtney Mattison’s artwork is her desire to inspire real-life changes in how people view and treat the world’s oceans and environments. Similar to the Our Changing Seas series, Courtney Mattison’s Hope Spots collection comprises 18 vignettes, each of which represents a vital marine ecosystem in its ideal form (that is, protected from various threats such as global warming or pollution).
See more of Mattison’s work here.
(Photo by Arthur Evans)
The Dish 