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Sea Glass: Artist overcomes fear of diving with exquisite results

What does water look like when you’re immersed in it? Can you see wind? Artist Shayna Leib began exploring these questions about a decade ago when she embarked on “Wind and Water” – her series of intricately hand-crafted glass sculptures that appear to flow like anemone tentacles moving with an incoming tide. She says:
“Wind and water possess no intrinsic color, are clear to the point of invisibility, and yet move through space. We see not their form itself, but can detect their patterns and shapes only vicariously though the objects they affect. The trace of water’s touch over moss and sea life, the wind’s passage over marshlands… – these two forces make their presence known. Their character is contradictory and fickle, encompassing fragility and violence, placidity and turbulence.”…

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New book captures grace and intelligence of whales

Bryant Austin creates the world’s only high-resolution, life-size photographs of whales. A photographer and marine mammal conservationist, Austin is passionate about exploring and creating connections between humanity and whales – what he calls “the greatest minds in the water.”
Austin’s just-released book, Beautiful Whale, catalogs his quest to “recreate the transcendent sensation one experiences floating an arm’s length away from the eye of an inquisitive whale.” This 124 page, 12 x 15 inch coffee table book published by Abrams features exquisite life-size (or “whale-scale”) photos of whales’ eyes, numerous full-body photo mosaics reproduced as 1:6 scale fold-out pages, and a foreword from Dr. Sylvia Earle.
Austin first became inspired to create full-body images of whales at sea during a dive in 2004 when, floating motionless in the water, he felt a gentle tap on his shoulder from a 45-ton female humpback whale.…

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Bay Area Painter Celebrates Beauty of Marine Life to Support Conservation

"We live on the edge of giant, writhing oceans of life that continue to pump masses of much needed oxygen into the air we breath. Yet our life-filled seas face threatening hardships such as pollution, plastics, and overfishing."

– Cleo Vilett

“Leafy Sea Dragon” Oil on canvas, 24”x18” © Cleo Vilett 2008

In light of human-caused environmental challenges, artist Cleo Vilett invites her viewers to take a closer look. A painter, scientific illustrator and marine biologist by training, Vilett is a Bay Area native with a passion for the natural world. Through her work, she hopes “to bring attention to marine subjects as art while promoting conservation of the world’s oceans.”

“Large Jellies” Acrylic and resin on birch, 22”x10” © Cleo Vilett 2011

Vilett’s appreciation for the beauty of sea life began while earning a degree in marine biology.…

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Photorealist painter uses humor to highlight dilemma of marine debris

Above: “Mighty Migration” oil on canvas, 30″ x 40″ © Karen Hackenberg 2011
“I am walking on the Discovery Bay beach outside of Port Townsend WA where I live, swim, and kayak. Collecting colorful plastic cone-shaped tips of washed-up fireworks’ rockets for use in my sculpture, I examine the live pulpy bodies of moon snails in their white shells and the purple velvet “fur” on sand dollars, as well as the stranded plastic bags, the crab shell molts, the squid egg cases, the running shoes, logs, plastic water bottles, shot gun shells, disposable lighters, ropes of bull kelp, nylon ropes, eel grasses, striated stones and glowing agates. I struggle to make sense of this diverse and incongruous debris, and to somehow make peace with its implications.”…

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