Bryan Ezola - 2021

Artist's Statement

As a child, I spent countless hours with my family, camping and exploring the mountains and rivers of the western United States. I also held a deep fascination for the ocean and the various things that live beneath its surface. These mountains, rivers, and oceans still hold my fascination today and serve as inspiration for my work. My sculptures are based on the leftover remnants of imagined life that could exist anywhere around us in nature. For this project I chose to focus on coral bleaching. Coral reefs are some of the most vibrant, diverse, and stunningly beautiful ecosystems that exist on our planet. The slow death of these environments is not only devastating to local populations but to oceans at large. To simulate the dead lifeless coral, I chose to work with plaster; almost bone-white in nature, plaster lends itself well to my concept. I sculpted a form from clay and then created a silicon mold based on that clay form and then cast the form in plaster from the mold.