Friday, March 11, 2011

Colors of the Caribbean Sea

This was a happy commission... a mobile the colors of the Caribbean Sea. I put one small bright yellow disc, like the glorious sun beaming down on the warm sand... the curves of the beams in this mobile remind me of waves lapping at the shore, with glass the colors of crystal blue ocean water.
Once while in Belize I stayed in a place that had a long white pier with wooden chairs on the beach outside out little rented home. This is my idea of a great view.
Before I left for this trip I had a dream, I was on a beach staying in a purple hut on stilts right on the ocean. Sort of like a cartoon. Sure enough we flew down to Belize, caught a bus out to the beach (the buses there are brightly painted re-purposed old yellow school buses pumping reggae music) and while wandering around to find a place to stay, there were these huts on stilts, built in rows on the beach, painted perfectly purple. We had to stay there!

The little dock on the ocean was also part of these purple beach houses. We sat on those chairs for a few hours that first day and burnt our Portland-white-kid-white-white-skin. Unfortunately the sand flies seemed to think these beach houses were as cool as I did, the ocean breeze coming in the window at night also brought the sand flies. So we only stayed there one night, my friend got eaten alive all night by the tiny nearly invisible pests (they thought his blood was way tastier than mine) and the next day I found out the solution was rent a room that had air conditioning, the bugs didn't like the cold.

It as only one night, but a great story I think, purple huts on stilts on the beach. In my dream it was something more of a funny purple house on stilts stranded on an otherwise empty island... Heres what they looked like in reality
Ironically, when I fired the discs for this mobile, one of the blue discs turned bright purple in the kiln (I had mislabeled a piece of unstruck glass). I quickly made a replacement that is a beautiful blue-green. The purple disc brought me back to fun memories in Belize.