Adam
Adam
15” x 5”
Mixed media: mussel shells, silver​​​​​​​
“Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28) (NIV).
This piece is a depiction of the biblical figure of Adam. He is standing, legs together and slightly crossed. His arms are outstretched but truncated at the shoulders. His black, rippling and striated muscle system forms the surface of his body, adorned with traces of sterling silver.
​​​​​​With God’s very first commandments to the human race, foundations were being laid for environmental ruin. Mankind was to own, dominate, subjugate and control the entirety of the natural world. To treat all other life as possessions to be forced into submission, abused or consumed at will. So I decided it was time to remake the biblical figure of Adam. He would be, instead, about a symbiotic and interconnected coexistence with the biosphere. It was not without irony, that the creation of this piece was to be my demise.
As I searched the natural world for the materials for his construction, I began to explore the evolutionary relationship of our anatomy to the primordial ocean. Representations of our elemental structures revealed themselves everywhere, mirrored, in whole or in part, in the cast off remains of the shells and bones that I was collecting. And for Adam, it was the beautiful striations and colour of the Atlantic blue mussels that were to so wonderfully replicate his muscle fibre. But little did I know that the mussels were going to impart an urgent message, their last testament, and bequeath to me the agony of their doomed existence.
These poor little bivalves were filter feeders. Trapped in their polluted habitats, and forced to feed in our massively poisoned waters, they had bio-accumulated heavy metals. And as I began to grind and shape the shells to form his body, I too began to accumulate. Lead, arsenic, cadmium... my injury was severe.
But perhaps I was just a fragile place. A rupture in the artificial barrier that separates humanity from the natural world, where the suffering of this fractured earth, an avalanche beneath our surface, broke through to make itself be heard.
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The mussels that form his muscle system are richly hued, with black and brown and sienna, and subtle hints of purple and magenta. But there are signs of deterioration, and parts of his chest and knees seem almost in decay. His facial features emerge from small pieces of darkly dyed pearl and the back of his head is split open, exposing a brain formed from walnut shell and framed in organic shapes of blackened sterling silver. His throat is open and a translucent, carved sea worm tube forms his trachea.
Just in front of it, protruding upwards from the chest cavity, are the crossed deep orange mandibles of a Dobson fly, that imply the tendons in his neck.
On his reverse, his spine is formed from tiny cored out spirals of snail shells.
At the top, between his well formed shoulder blades, a dark raw sienna section of a beaver skull transitions to his neck.
The two sides of his beautiful buttocks are formed from a small, once broken and self repaired mussel. Between the cheeks, we can glimpse a keyhole.
Adam’s key has an ornate sterling silver shaft and there is a small spoon at the opposite end.
When the key is turned, his penis - perfectly and naturally formed from a beautiful, golden dyed pearl, pops up in full erection.
A small hidden door in his thigh can then be opened to reveal two perfectly round black pearls which are his testicles. They are held by tiny magnets and can be removed with his little spoon.
Opening the doors of his chest, his organ structure, built around a beaver’s skull, is revealed.
In front is a delicate and intricate filagree visceral cover made form sterling silver, garnets and topaz. His translucent lungs made from paper shell nautili, can just be seen pushing out from the top.
Lifting off the visceral cover, and then the Dobsons fly just beneath, the rest of his organs are revealed. His bowel made of translucent soft pink and white sea worm tubes, and his liver made from the hearing cochlea of the beaver skull that forms his organ structure. A little shrew skull forms his bladder, with silver ureters that wind over to the pearls that form his kidneys.
His heart, encased inside a deep red bivalve, is made from a delicate and translucent lamp shell. It contains an opal, which symbolizes hope. And it is seated where the little shell’s inhabitant once resided, as the hopes and dreams of another creature now lost, merge to fill his heart.
When his head is opened, we find, on the interior of the walnut shell, his rough grey seashell brain.
It is hinged and on the inside it displays a web of sterling silver filagree, that surrounds a butterfly pupa.
He is transforming as he reveals our destiny, inextricably bound to all life on this planet.
Photo Credits: Marina Dempster