Mar

The Underwater Museums of Jason deCaires Taylor

by Eva Boynton on March 14, 2016

A woman snorkeling in the underwater museum of Jason deCaires Taylor that shows innovations of artist and ocean. (image © Jason deClaire Taylor).

Enter a world of blue, where sculptures function as art and habitat.
© Jason deCaires Taylor

Experience the Creative Partnership of Artist and Ocean

Under the blue line of the ocean’s surface is a world alive with movement. The environment is itself in constant motion; sunlight ripples across the scales of fish, while coral reef plants sway with the push and pull of the currents.

Often this world is forgotten by us land-dwellers, but not by sculptor and naturalist Jason deCaires Taylor. He has created, in the world’s first underwater museums, the perfect exhibit space for his larger-than-life sculptures.

His are museums that need no curator. The ocean does that job, constantly updating the exhibit and transforming the sculptures into a functioning artificial reef. Perhaps it is this partnership between artist and ocean that is the true innovation.

Sculpture in the underwater museum by Jason deCaires Taylor, showing innovations by artist and ocean. (Image © Jason deCaire's Taylor)

The ocean is an extraordinary exhibition space, altering art with life.
© Jason deClaires Taylor

An Eye for New Terrain, A Voice for the Ocean’s Future

What makes a great art exhibit? Emotive lighting, hints of wonder, astonishment, awe, or a powerful backdrop? Taylor’s chosen space has them all.

Taylor constructed underwater museums first near Grenada and then off the coast of Cancún, Mexico, and the Bahamas. Later he moved to more underwater locations around the world from Indonesia to the Oslo Fjord in Norway. Taylor explains why he loves to work in the aquatic gallery space:

Being underwater is a deeply personal, liberating, and otherworld experience. Like many interactions with the natural world, submersion is both humbling and life-affirming.

A sculpture of a woman with coral growing from her sides in the underwater museum by Jason deCaires Taylor, showing innovations of artist and ocean. (image © Jason deCaires Taylor)

Reclamation, accentuated by dramatic lighting, purple Gorgonian sea fans, and a blue backdrop, reclaims the ocean as a precious place.
© Jason deClaires Taylor

Through his passion for diving, Taylor acquired an understanding of the sea’s territory, seeing it as a place to be revered and respected. Travelers who visit his museums sense, through his art installations, this feeling of deep respect for the oceans.

The sculptures, themselves, give voice to messages about the environment.

Sculptures of young people holding hands in a circle in the underwater museum off the coast of Grenada, an innovation by Jason deCaires Taylor. (image © Jason deCaires Taylor)

Vicissitudes, off the coast of Grenada, symbolizes the cycle of life and how we
are all affected by the circumstance of our surroundings.
© Jason deCaires Taylor

Sculptures of bankers with their heads in the sand in the underwater museum of Jason deCaires Taylor, showing innovations by artist and ocean. (image © Jason deCaires Taylor).

The Bankers, submerged near Cancún, communicates denial and resistance to environmental
crises caused by over-fishing, dredging, and careless tourism.
© Jason deCaires Taylor

Taylor’s underwater museums, however, are more than a message. They show that humans can, in turn, have a positive impact on nature.

Art that Takes Action

Although coral reefs inhabit only 1% of the ocean’s vastness, a quarter to a third of all marine species call them home. Coral reefs are fleeting and fragile, too. Coral and sea sponges can be swept away by a hurricane or a snorkeler’s careless hand. They are often over-visited and over-fished.

With this in mind, Taylor constructs his sculptures in a way that preserves and extends coral reefs.

A sculpture of a girl in a garden of coral in Jason deCaires Taylor's underwater museum, showing innovations by both artist and ocean. (Image © Jason deCaires Taylor)

Taylor’s “Oh, I See” Moment: Gardening is not just for greenhouses.
© Jason deCaires Taylor

He uses durable ph-neutral cement to form his artwork, texturing surfaces so that reef plants can attach. This encourages the expansion of the natural landscape, and results in living spaces for crustaceans and fish.

His underwater museums, then, serve as artificial reefs that relieve natural reefs from excessive tourism in destinations like Cancún, Mexico. When snorkelers and divers spend time visiting Taylor’s sculptures, the natural reefs have space and time to generate life.

Artist Jason deCaires Taylor scuba dives and plants coral in his sculptures in the underwater museum, showing innovations by artist and ocean. (image © Jason deCaires Taylor).

Taylor begins the rehabilitation process by planting coral in Man on Fire
near Isla Mujeres, Mexico.
© Jason deCaires Taylor

What started as “a small community” of sculptures off the coast of Cancún, grew into “an entire movement of people in defense of the sea.”

A school of fish swims around sculptures that have become an artificial reef in Jason deCaires Taylor's underwater museum, demonstrating the innovation of an underwater museum. (Image © Jason deClaires Taylor).

500 sculptures offer surfaces, nooks and crannies for marine life to develop.
Art and preservation go hand in hand in Silent Evolution.
© Jason deCaires Taylor

Through his sculptures, Taylor has provided an amazing gallery of art and a place for ocean life to flourish. Ocean and artist share the same goals: encouragement of life. They have a symbiotic relationship, benefiting one another with their artistic innovations.

Silent Innovation by the Sea

Without as much as a whisper, the ocean begins to change the sculptures. As nature flourishes, the artwork undergoes mind-blowing transformations. Taylor explains witnessing the change:

As soon as we submerge the sculptures, they are not ours anymore. . . . The sculptures—they belong to the sea. As new reefs form, a new world literally starts to evolve.

Two sculptures covered in plant growth in the underwater museum of Jason deCaires Taylor, showing innovation by both artist and ocean. (Image © Jason deCaires Taylor)

The ocean breathes life, color, and texture into Taylor’s work.
They become living sculptures.
© Jason deCaires Taylor

For Taylor, the innovation in his work really begins when nature takes over. The ocean paints with the most spectacular red algae, curving coral, and sponges.

A sculpture covered in sea sponges, coral, algae and a sea star in the underwater museum of Jason deCaires Taylor, showing innovations by both artist and ocean. (Image © Jason deCaires Taylor).

What was once a cement casting of a local fisherman is now a
bizarre and beautiful sea creature.
© Jason deCaires Taylor

The transformation from studio to sea floor goes something like this:

A model's face, the sculpture of the model, and the sculpture transformed by the ocean after its installation in the underwater museum of Jason deCaires Taylor, showing innovation by both artist and ocean. (Image © Jason deCaires Taylor)

A recognizable figure becomes a sculpture and is then abstracted by sponges and algae.
Nature leaves her mark near Isla Mujeres, Cancún, Mexico.
© Jason deCaires Taylor

Jason deCaires Taylor’s work is a collaboration with the environment. Taylor lays down the foundation, and Nature forms positive mutations, achieving extraordinary appearances that only the ocean could conjure upon these man-made surfaces.

Oh, I See for Myself

I visited one of Taylor’s underwater museums off the coast of Cancún. As I swam from one sculpture to another, weaving around real reefs to visit the artificial ones, I saw first-hand how the sculptures change with time, how they become more a part of the sea with each passing day.

A view of the sculpture "Reclamation" in Jason deCaires Taylor's underwater, showing the innovations of both artist and ocean. (image © Eva Boynton).

Floating above Reclamation
© Eva Boynton

I experienced the quiet underneath the ocean’s surface—a forgotten world that supports extraordinary life all the while. I became a part of Taylor’s artwork and mission, a traveler who entered his underwater museum out of curiosity and who left with a sense of responsibility to encourage life in Earth’s vast blue oceans.

—§—

Thank you, Jason, for your wonderful work and for sharing your photography. To see more images of Taylor’s work, check out his underwater sculptures. Dive deeper into Taylor’s underwater museum with this five minute video.

Comment on this post below.

Eva Boynton 6 Comments

Mexico/Nature Discovery/The World's Art & Design

Feb

Wordplay and Watercolor: Edward Lear in Gozo

by Joyce McGreevy on February 8, 2016

Edward Lear's watercolor painting of Gozo, Malta, a place he visited with a traveler's wanderlust and one that inspired his wordplay. (Image by Edward Lear, public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

A tireless traveler, Edward Lear expressed the magnificence of Gozo, Malta,
through delicate watercolor paintings and colorful wordplay.
Edward Lear [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Wanderlust on My Lear-ical Visit to Malta

It’s winter in Malta, 1862. Edward Lear, lover of wordplay and watercolor, is writing a letter. His phrasing echoes the rhythm of Mediterranean tides against this tiny archipelago:

“I draw constantly on the Barracca point; meaning to paint a picture thereof one day; and I wander up and down the beautiful streets of Valletta and Senglea; and rejoice in the delightful heat and the blue sky; and watch the thousand little boats skimming across the harbor at sunset.”

Boats line Senglea marina in Malta, a place that inspired Edward Lear's wanderlust, wordplay, and watercolor paintings. (Image by Joyce McGreevy)

A winter sunset transforms Senglea, Malta into a living watercolor.
© Joyce McGreevy

As you read those words 154 years after Lear penned them, it’s a winter morning in Malta and I am here, too. Come along with me to this tiny republic just south of Sicily and east of Tunisia. See for yourself the thousand little boats, the luzzus.

The brightly painted wooden boats, or luzzus, in Gozo, Malta inspired the wanderlust of wordplay poet and watercolor painter Edward Lear. (Image by Joyce McGreevy)

The tradition of Malta’s brightly painted wooden boats began with the ancient Phoenicians.
© Joyce McGreevy

Linger at a café table alongside the water. Leave your cellphone at the bottom of the suitcase.

Should you order a pastizzi, Malta’s savory version of stuffed pastry? You should.

If you look across Grand Harbor, up to the raised walled city of Valletta, you’ll find “the Barracca point,” better known as Upper Barrakka Gardens.

From this lofty fortress, Lear would revel in his wanderlust, gazing back at Senglea as he sketched and painted in watercolor.

Wintering and Wandering in Malta

Best known for his wordplay, the author of The Book of Nonsense was a compulsive traveler, writer, and artist. Edward Lear logged 30 volumes of travel diaries, wrote countless letters, and created thousands of watercolors.

In Malta alone, he produced 300 watercolors. He painted over many of them, possibly out of frustration. The British colonials who had enjoyed his 1866 exhibit in Malta paid him handsomely—but only in compliments. Few paintings sold.

Edward Lear's watercolor painting of St. Julian's Bay, Malta, a place that inspired the wanderlust of this British master of wordplay. (Image by Edward Lear, public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

Edward Lear’s watercolors captured specific moments. After painting this view of St. Julian’s Bay,
the poet quickly scribbled the note “5:16pm, 29 Dec. 1865.”
Edward Lear [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Lear first arrived in Malta on a ticket that he bought for 10 pounds. You’re traveling on a shoestring, too, but Malta in winter is affordable. Just rent a small flat on Triq San Frangisk (Saint Francis Street) and cook from the local markets.

“Pretty cheap fruit abounds,” Lear wrote to his sister in 1848. The Maltese are fastidious about fresh produce. This morning the greengrocer steers you away from produce that is “too old”—a mere two days. Come back this afternoon, he says, when the boats will come in and everything will be perfection.

You do and it is. “Grazzi ħafna!” Thank you so much!

Lear’s Wordplay Leads to World Play

But now it’s time to resume your quest. The call to adventure came as you researched Malta and stumbled upon two mysterious adjectives: pomskizillious and gromphiberous.

What does this wordplay describe? According to Lear, it’s the coast of Gozo. This is the northernmost island of Malta.

The name Gozo comes from the Castilian word for “joy,” a mood that combines with quiet calm in Edward Lear’s watercolors. Notice the details he added about colors and time of day.
Edward Lear [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Consider this: Malta’s mainland shows up as a tiny dot on a map of the Mediterranean. So the 26-square-mile Gozo practically qualifies as imaginary. Which makes it the ideal place to follow in the footsteps of a nonsense poet. Let wordplay lead to world play.

The easiest way to get to Gozo is to not be in a hurry. Enjoy the scenic bus ride to Cirkewwa and board the ferry that will take you to Mgarr Harbour.

Then leg it—the island’s less than nine miles long—until you reach the village of Xaghra (SHAH-rah). This is home to The Pomskizillious Museum of Toys, dedicated to the legacy of Edward Lear.

Oh, but it’s closed today. And tomorrow. Come back Saturday.

A shop sign outside The Pomskizillious Museum of Toys in Gozo, Malta pays tribute to Edward Lear, whose wanderlust inspired him to coin wordplay and create watercolor paintings about Gozo. (Image by Joyce McGreevy)

Technically, these opening hours are set in stone.
But when it’s winter in Gozo, it’s best to be chill.
© Joyce McGreevy

Into the Dice-Box of Small Events

No worries. Take a lesson from Lear, who obsessively planned his travels, but knew when to toss the itinerary:

“Put yourself as a predestinarian might say, calmly into the dice-box of small events, and be shaken out whenever circumstances ordain,” he once advised.

Your jaw drops as you view the landscape. Flinty, terraced hills soar into peaks and plateaus, some topped by ornate churches. Velvety, green valleys sweep down to startling azure seas.

The garrigue, or Mediterranean scrubland, shows off prickly pear cactus and yellow vetch, but also hides sea daffodils, spider orchids, crimson dragon’s teeth, and other floral secrets.

Prickly pear cactus grows wild in Gozo, Malta, a place Edward Lear visited with a traveler's wanderlust and one that inspired his wordplay and watercolor paintings. (Image by Joyce McGreevy)

Edward Lear noted the “strange and wild appearance” of prickly pear cactus, which grows
“in immense luxuriance over every crag and mountainside” in Gozo.
© Joyce McGreevy

You picture Lear in the midst of it, how “he would lift his spectacles and gaze for several minutes at the scene through a monocular glass he always carried.” Then he would capture it in watercolor with astounding speed.

Even in winter, the fragrance of pines, rosemary, thyme, and citrus pervades the air. You struggle to come up with words to describe this environment.

Suddenly, you laugh out loud. You have just have had an “Oh, I see” moment: Sometimes you need the wordplay of new language to describe a new place. Like pomskizillious. And gromphiberous.

The Pomskizillious Museum of Toys never does open. But by then, you’ve learned to appreciate what locals call GMT: Gozo Maybe Time. Meanwhile, you have:

wandered the island like Lear, a tireless walker and meticulous collector of moments.
seen Calypso’s Cave, mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey, where a sea nymph offered Ulysses immortality if he would remain her captive.
climbed into a “beautiful pea-green boat” at Dwerja, where you glided through sea caves and gazed up at the precipitous coastline that inspired Lear.

A hiker stares down from atop the Azure Window in Gozo, Malta, place Edward Lear visited with a traveler's wanderlust and one that inspired his wordplay and watercolor paintings. (Image by Joyce McGreevy)

Poetic but precipitous: Does the cliff climber in Gozo, Malta know Edward Lear’s
cautionary limerick about the person from Cromer?
© Joyce McGreevy

This is Gozo, a place so stunning it seems imaginary. A place that inspires wanderlust, wordplay, and watercolor. It lures you with improbable beauty, inspires you to follow a nonsense poet’s trail, and hints that maybe, just maybe, you’ll attain immortality if you stay.

And really, is there anything more pomskizillious and gromphiberous than that?

The Azure Window graces the rugged coast of Gozo, Malta, a place that Edward visited with a traveler's wanderlust and one that inspired his wordplay and watercolor paintings. (Image by Joyce McGreevy)

The Azure Window may look familiar to “Game of Throne” fans. Several scenes were filmed on Gozo.
© Joyce McGreevy

Read Edward Lear’s travel writing and letters here. This is the source of all Lear quotations cited in this post.

The largest collection of Edward Lear’s watercolors is archived at Harvard University.

Comment on this post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

Joyce McGreevy 8 Comments

Literary World/Malta/The World's Art & Design/Wordplay

Feb

The Art of Urban and Rural Exploration

by Eva Boynton on February 2, 2016

A winding staircase in an abandoned building shows how the art of urban exploration makes you see things differently (image © Christian Richter).

See Things Differently, See Beauty in Decay

While perusing the library of my travel photos, I found a surprising result. Faces and landscapes were few and far between. Crumbling brick, rusted door knobs, cracked walls, paint discoloration, and patterns of flaking exteriors took center stage. Why?

Because I see things differently. Not only do deserted buildings and decaying walls provide powerful settings for photography, but they are themselves, a form of art.

I see beauty in decay, stories and legend in the abandoned, rejuvenation in the old, and endurance for the decrepit. I was an urban explorer before I knew urban exploration, or urbex, existed. I love to document the dilapidated and decrepit. Take a look. See its beauty. See things differently.

Exterior wall with stained blue patterns, showing how the art of urban exploration makes you see things differently. (image © Eva Boynton)

Art Lessons

Found among the debris of disregarded buildings is the great professor of color theory. The mix of colors, patterns, and shapes that form from wear and tear provide art lessons of the natural kind. They inform the palette of painters and delight the eye of those who appreciate art.

A wall's paint discolored by urban decay, showing how urban exploration can make you see things differently. (image © Eva Boynton)

Urban exploration develops an eye for the aesthetics of decay. Through the camera lens, photographers learn to frame exquisite landscapes of colors, textures, and patterns. They snap their pictures and document the eroding walls and deteriorating doors.

An eroding wall exposing brick and blues, pinks and yellows, demonstrating how urban exploration makes you see things differently. (image © Eva Boynton).

For the photographer, the lessons in art go beyond color studies to recognizing a remarkable backdrop. They teach skills in perspective—when to go in close on the details and when to pull back to think about the entire composition.

A portrait of a woman standing in front of a decaying wall, showing how the art of urban exploration makes you see things differently. (image © Eva Boynton).

Nature’s Paintbrush

Nature paints with living colors of moss, ivy, and oxidation. Environmental factors take effect over time, exposing the raw layers of what lies beneath. Humidity causes discoloration and stained patterns, while rain flakes the walls. These are the unlikely mediums of nature’s paintbrush that create the aesthetics relished by urban and rural explorers alike.

Green moss growing on a Mayan wall in Quintana Roo, Mexico, is an artwork of decay that makes you see things differently. (image © Eva Boynton)

Nature alters architecture, interacting with what humans have built. She animates a dormant surface, producing wonderfully erratic and random displays of color, texture and pattern. These spectacular shows of decay are of the moment and are the prize of urban and rural explorers.

A wall and door with dynamic colors, showing the effect of decay gives an opportunity to see things differently. (image © Eva Boynton).

Cracks and crackles of ocean indigo and rusty reds on this Mexican wall
frame a new door that is itself already starting to decay.
© Eva Boynton

Once Nature starts to take over, every moment counts. The process is a constant evolution, one in which change comes from both decomposition and the sprouting of new plant life. Standing in front of a scene of urban decay is like watching a live performance—a year, a month, or even a day later, the mutations create a new look.

A deserted hotel room in Europe with plants growing over the bed, illustrating how photographers engaged in urban exploration make you see things differently. (image © Christian Richter).

Urban and rural exploration teaches how to see beauty in the most unlikely of subjects. Decaying walls and buildings and beds, however, are more than an artistic opportunity or nature’s playground. They also tell powerful stories.

Stories in the Abandoned

Explorers of all types need imagination and courage for their journeys. Urban exploration is no different. Although rotten floors and unstable ceilings can be a challenging setting, abandoned buildings produce unique photographic stories.

Students once studied in these very desks. Photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre safeguard the memory with a camera.

A deserted classroom in Europe, captured by a photographer doing urban exploration, makes you see things differently. (image © Christian Richter).

Photos of Detroit’s deserted theaters and dust-caked hotels preserve a story of time passing—a story of people coming and going, of an empire rising and fading away.

An abandoned room of a hotel apartment in Detroit, captured by a photographer engaged in urban exploration who wants you to see things differently. (image © Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre)

The Lee Plaza hotel, completed in Detroit in 1929, was a
production of the “construction frenzy” era.
©Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre

Like the rings of a tree, you can count the layers of dust or paint to imagine the history that the walls have witnessed over the years. Perhaps a family celebrated their success here by checking into this 1920s luxury suite. Maybe they invited a pianist to serenade them as they ate a decadent meal. Were they part of the social segregation that caused the abandonment of many buildings in the city?

Abandoned buildings are a mausoleum of sorts, where stories of the past are buried. When photographs from urban explorers preserve these relics, they turn the rotting past into a monument of the present.

An abandoned library in Europe, captured by a photographer engaged in urban exploration who wants you to see things differently. (image © Christian Richter)

The ruins become the roots of a present-day place, the survivors, heritage sites in their own right. They evoke eerie, nostalgic emotions, and they house awe-inspiring stories of heroic destruction.

Oh, I See Decay Differently

Rust may be a sign of disuse and chipped paint a sign of failure to “keep up appearances,” but the art of decay revealed in my urban and rural exploration makes me see things differently. With fresh and creative eyes, I see beauty and inspiration in the old, lost, disregarded, and abandoned. What do you see?

Comment on this post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

Thank you Christian Richter and Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre for sharing your beautiful photography.