“The World Below the Brine” is a series of wall, floor and pedestal sculptures made from cut and painted paper waves and “ghost gear,” fishing nets, rope and tackle salvaged from oceans around the world.

These sculptures evoke the drama and brutality of the invisible war on aquatic life beneath the surface of our oceans, trapping and killing marine animals decades after fishing expeditions end.

Ghost gear constitutes 46% of the Pacific Garbage Patch, and 10% of all ocean plastic. Yet these destructive materials have a raw beauty, a mix of vibrant colors, textures and forms. So too will the brushstroke-like waves, ensnared by and interwoven with the ghost gear.

Inspired by Walt Whitman’s poem of the same title, as well as the woodblock prints of Utagawa Kuniyoshi depicting samurai battles in and with the sea, the resulting sculptures are both buoyant and heavy, natural and artificial, ominous and visually ravishing.

The World Below the Brine

BY WALT WHITMAN

The world below the brine,
Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves,
Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds, the thick tangle, openings, and pink turf,
Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold, the play of light through the water,
Dumb swimmers there among the rocks, coral, gluten, grass, rushes, and the aliment of the swimmers,
Sluggish existences grazing there suspended, or slowly crawling close to the bottom,
The sperm-whale at the surface blowing air and spray, or disporting with his flukes,
The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy sea-leopard, and the sting-ray,
Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes, sight in those ocean-depths, breathing that thick-breathing air, as so many do,
The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed by beings like us who walk this sphere,
The change onward from ours to that of beings who walk other spheres.