Coloring Fish / Resin Inserts for Memorial

I had decided to make the salmon sculptures into copper or bronze so that, over time, the surface would patinize naturally, representing life & death in a subtle way. I thought that decision was still appropriate, but after a group survey, nearly everyone we talked to mentioned that they’d like a colorful artwork—a space that’s nice to sit in. I remembered that Gillie & Marc, who has statues all over London of anthropomorphic animals, made painted aluminum statues that can be placed outside. With the knowledge that this is possible but without enough time to actually test the real material, I decided to paint the fish with acrylics. I don’t know if it’s common in the UK or used to be, but selling bisqueware to be painted in acrylics and sprayed at home was a common business in the US. Some shops still exist in rural areas in Louisiana, but it’s more common for businesses to sell bisqueware to be glazed & fired.

Either way, I think the finish would look similar enough to the final product, and more importantly, it’s much easier to make accurate colors in acrylic rather than guessing. I had decided to pick out colors in the natural landscape of the garden and incorporate them into the statues.

The marble I put in the little fish represents where I’m going to put resin inserts. I was going to use actual marbles in the final project, but I decided against it because they look too much like fish eggs (which is the point, but I wanted to turn away from the reproduction aspect of it).

I had a bit of an eureka moment once one of the interviewees mentioned that toddlers/babies also give/receive transplants. It had been mentioned before, and I knew that, but her saying that at that point made me realize a way to incorporate diversity into the project, and also a way to resolve the issue of whether or not incorporating lighting would be possible.

The resin circle on the right was my first attempt at the idea—at least, the best looking one. It’s all a light blue resin with black paper and cotton swabs. The other three were the better ones, where I mixed white dye with the cotton, and put two different colored layers so the colors are less muddied together. These will represent life, put behind scales in a hole in each small fish, and 9 in the big fish.