Hollow Bones, 2019

Hollow Bones is a project wherein a coral reef is re-imagined as a wall decoration, forcing the viewer to look straight on into the emptiness that exists inside. 3D modeled, and 3D printed and slip cast in porcelain, with the aid of a CNC mill, Hollow Bones is intentionally glazed white, because not only are dead reefs empty, but they are also bleached.

This piece was designed as a decorative ceramic wall piece to highlight our relationship to corals as beautiful but also functional. While their worth for humans is as tourist sites where we pay a hefty fee to sink underwater and look at them, their importance is much much greater, and that importance tends to be lost on us. Hollow Bones intentionally utilizes some traditional bowl forms, and traditional pottery techniques that have been manipulated and blended with technology to make something that could have been functional simply decorative.