Jacqueline Waggoner
Undergraduate, Ceramics
The Ocean As Our Beginnings
mixed media
My piece is a tent made of a cascade of ocean waves, surrounded by rocks and sand. It is an in-the-round sculpture with a parting between the waves at one point that allows the viewer to enter the tent, where there is enough room for one person to be huddled up. When researching this piece I came across the fact that we have only discovered a small percentage of our oceans, and I wanted to create a work that not only reflected the physical beauty of the ocean, but also created the uneasy feeling of unknown. The inside of the tent is very small, pitch black, and there are audible sounds from the bottom of the sea. I wanted the viewer to see the ocean as something possibly uncomfortable in how vast and unknown it is, despite it's outward beauty. I also as wanted to present the ocean as a womb-like experience to reflect the theory of life in which life originated from hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the sea.