Katherine O’Hara, University of Washington
Terracotta sculpture 30.48 x 60.96 cm.
From the artist: Consumed by the Sea is a sculpture that imagines a once-precious vase lost overboard and slowly claimed by the ocean. I pictured it tumbling along the seafloor, its clean curves eroded into jagged lips and encrusted surfaces, until it no longer clearly belonged to people or to nature. The piece is about being adrift and forgotten, yet still transforming.
To make the sculpture, I first coil-built a tall, symmetrical vessel, then disrupted it by cutting, tearing, and hollowing out sections. I added layered coils, fragments, and small growths to resemble coral, barnacles, and seastars wrapping around the vessel. A bubbling glaze helped create an effect of erosion and decay. Together, these choices create a vessel that looks like it has survived the depths, a body reshaped by time, water, and the unknown.