MUSEUM EXHIBITS

ANAMORPHOUS OCTOPUS by artist and 2011 South Walton Artist of the Year Allison Wickey will be comprised of 16 metal bars, each approximately one-half inch thick and 8 feet tall by 8 feet wide. “As soon as this project became a possibility, my mind went to anamorphosis, which is a distorted projection or perspective requiring the viewer to use special devices or occupy a specific vantage point to reconstitute ...

BEE GRAYT is inspired by artist Katie Witherspoon’s best friend who is a 3rd generation beekeeper based in Santa Rosa Beach, FL. Through her love of apiary knowledge, Katie also became more and more interested in the role that bees actually have in our ecological cycle. The artist owns an online plant shop called ‘Lil Plant Shop’ and has a love and passion for all things nature. The idea for BEE GRAYT came to her while deep ...

BUILDING BLOCKS is the realization of a concept artist Zachery Long had about a year ago. He wanted to build a metal sculpture that would become the building blocks for new life to take place. He imagined a beautiful stainless structure that was bold, strong, and growing yet delicately balanced and struggling to cling to life. Zachery could see many changing angles and spaces allowing colorful sea life to be displayed ...

Evelyn Tickle’s CONCRETE ROPE REEF SPHERES are made using a patent pending clean concrete formula developed by the artist to match the chemical makeup of an oyster shell, specifically for underwater reef use. The rope spheres will have artificial concrete oyster shells attached to the concrete rope, and the nooks and crannies in both the spheres and the shells will provide places for embryonic oysters and other ...

Matthew Gemmell and David Showalter are Baltimore-based artists who have worked together on various sculpture projects over the last 20 years. Their approach to this project was to consider diatoms as inspiration for creating an engaging underwater sculpture. These single celled organisms that inhabit our oceans are invisible to the naked eye, but a closer look at these foundational creatures in our marine ...

George Sabra’s EL PLASTICO replicates a plastic bottle on a massive scale constructed of environmentally cast concrete. This representation of something that generally harms marine life can instead play a direct role in helping it flourish. Sabra offers, “As an environmental artist I create artwork that brings to light again and again the impact our current consumption is having on our environment. By inviting the public in we can ...

Artist Jonathan Burger will construct an eight-foot tall mask form looking upwards towards the light filtering down through the water as the form for his sculpture, HOPE. The piece will only depict the front of the face, with a rough edge along the sides, leading down into a round neck form. Inspired by the broken forms of Greek and Roman sculptures, and by the work of Igor Mitoraj, the concept for this work deals with climate ...

Florida-based artist Rachel Herring will construct an underwater FLAMINGLE. “Flamingos symbolize fun, relaxation, and socializing– perfect description for this creation,” Rachel shares. She further notes, “The sculpture upholds my whimsical and playful art theme, and the shape of the columns along with the outlines of the flamingos will remain recognizable as growth occurs on the sculpture.” Rachel is also the creator of ...

Hawaii-based artist Janetta Napp is creating an abstract cement sculpture, NEW HOMES, that alludes to a row of cone snail egg casings reimagined as three vertical ovule panels. In total, the three panels together will weigh approximately 2090 lbs and will be 36” long. This piece is titled New Homes because each panel will have identical 6” diameter holes and randomly scattered .5” diameter indentations approximately .5” ...

PIRATE SHIPWRECK designer Sean Coffey (pictured right) is based in Pittsburgh, PA. His concept is based on the visual aesthetics of a sunken pirate ship. With years of ultra high performance concrete design experience coupled with more than a decade of building custom metal sculptures and structures, he will create a sunken pirate ship from 1/2″ thick aluminum angle and clad it in custom poured concrete planks ...

QUANTUM REEF by Tallahassee, Florida architect Chris Chubb occupies 100 square feet of the 617,500 square MILE Gulf of Mexico. Relatively, this is similar to the infinitesimal size of a single atom compared to a dinner plate. The Quantum Reef invites the viewer to leave the human scale and enter the sub-atomic scale. Analogous to a dynamic atom, Quantum Reef is animated by schools of fish darting through the aluminum ...

SWARA SKULL designer Vince Tatum’s career as an Art Director and Production Designer in the film industry, along with being a NAUI DIVE MASTER, make “the UMA project a diver’s dream.” Standing 8 feet tall, “SWARA Skull” will have a stainless steel jaw, nasal cavity and eye sockets, which will be the shape of Southern Stingrays. The dome of the skull will be cast of clean cement embedded with limestone to attract ...

Justin Gaffrey’s SELF PORTRAIT stands eight feet tall and is inspired by other recent sculpture the Santa Rosa Beach, Fla. artist has created, however this sculpture will be created from welded stainless steel bar. Gaffrey is internationally known for his primary body of work in heavy acrylic impastos often one to six inches thick, but he enjoys challenging himself in vast mediums and creates free-standing sculptural works ...

THE GRAYT PINEAPPLE by Florida-based artist Rachel Herring is an 8-foot tall stainless steel sculpture of a pineapple designed to help small fish thrive. The inside of the piece will remain hollow, and the outline of the leaves on top will look like the sun when viewed from above. Herring has painted most of her life but has recently begun working with discarded wood and other found pieces. “What better way to bring new wildlife ...

TO REPLENISH WITH WATER is a design by Brazilian artist and marine researcher Beatriz Chachamovits. This sculptural piece approaches the theme of ocean degradation through the concept of coral bleaching. The artwork depicts a cluster of different species of Florida’s corals (elkhorn, staghorn, brain and fire) and sponges (tube, vase and barrel) bleached, infused with forms of plastic waste that will be covered through ...

WELCOME HOME by Oklahoma-based artist Zachery Long is a gesture we are all familiar with and can relate to. The sculpture has a two-fold meaning. Creating these three UMA letters is a thank you to the people making this new habitat a reality. “The Underwater Museum of Art is more important than we all know,” said Long. “It is a positive movement in the right direction leading by example to create net positives for our ...

From the depths of our reefs, to the soft tissue in our heads controlling our every move, the reaction-diffusion pattern expressed in ARC OF NEXUS from artist Tina Piracci exemplifies the synergy and wonder of the macrocosm we live in today. Enchanted by the uncanny echo of these patterns across various scales, the artist aims to illuminate similar algorithmic arrangements through the intersection of science and art...

BLOOM BABY BLOOM Florida-based artist Brit Deslonde’s inspiration was heavily influenced by the textures, forms and flows that she holds dear when thinking about her diving experiences. She wanted to create a piece that felt positive, and reflected the hope that artificial reefs and reef restoration bring, while still providing a welcoming home to fish and flora that may find their home in her artwork. The “off balance'” ...

Atlanta-based artist Pat Mclain’s hope for the CETACEAN REMAINS sculpture is for it to be an extremely interactive experience for the diver giving them the ability to swim through the piece like a tunnel. When he first heard of the museum his mind thought of something that would naturally be found on the ocean floor. Something that seemed prehistoric but was supposed to be there. Doing a simple segment of the body like ...

CURRENTS AND TAFONI is a limestone sculpture by artist Joe Adams. Adams will create a vortex of shell-like structural anatomy, whirling currents providing curve-linear “shelves’ for coral to live abundantly with three hole spaces between allowing fish to flow through it. The sculpture will be shaped with diamond saws, grinders, air hammers and hand worked with chisels and files. The “detail” will be in the larger sense of how ...

DEPTH OF DECISION by Boston-based artist Gianna Stewart is a gesture for the ocean, a sunken series of decisions. Nuances to the cast concrete doors will be visible during its preview on land, and various openings in its structure and doors will serve as artificial reef for marine life. One door is just slightly ajar, another wide open. An open door is an invitation to enter or exit: a closed door is a challenge. A series of ...

Readers may recognize FIBONACCI CONCHOUSNESS artist Anthony Heinz May from his recent Roost and Puddle sculpture addition to the Watersound® Monarch Art Trail. His concrete conch shell design for the UMA reflects site-responsive specificity of location of UMA and existentialism between museum goers, natural/human-built environments and precarious human-nature relationships. The conch will lay on its side ...

Husband and wife team, design duo, and dive buddies Ingram Ober and Marisol Rendon will co-create I FOUND IT! The sculpture will consist of elements relating to a lost pirate treasure. The central element will be a 6-7’ tall diamond ring consisting of a cast concrete band and a jewel fabricated with a stainless steel rod structure covered on the inside with expanded metal lath and covered in “Clean Concrete” to create a hollow ...

LET’S NOT BLOW THIS is a creation by American designer Kevin Reilly. This piece represents the earth as a fragile dandelion. The hand represents man’s potential to restore and protect our environment. It is meant, now more than ever, as a hopeful call to do all that we can to preserve our natural world. Underwater Museum divers will also be able to visit Kevin’s 2018 installation, JYC’s Dream, an homage to the “Aqualung,” ...

ONE TREE is an 8' tall by 9' wide by 9' deep concrete sculpture depicting two trees grown together over time with their roots entwined from artist Ann Moeller Steverson. The fantastical branches of the trees feature four seasons, from blossoms to fruit, falling leaves, and the adornment of icicles. From the right angle, viewers would see the suggestion of a heart shape between the trunk and branches. The roots, in the ...

Missouri-based artist Nathan Hoffman is creating POSEIDON'S THRONE. Poseidon’s Throne sits empty. The ruler and representative of the rawness and power of the ocean, is gone. Where to? That we do not know, but who will take his place? Hoffman wants the viewer of this sizable throne to imagine themselves taking the seat. It is a huge burden, but one that we all must take up if we are to save the ocean from ourselves. We ...

Artist Raine Bedsole is based in Santa Rosa Beach, FL. Her work has dealt with the idea of 'vessel' for a long time. The boat sculpture and the figurative sculpture are both vessels of the psyche. Currently, she is working on a series of sculptures based on the female figure. Although they began as a 'universal' self portrait, these figures are somewhat androgynous. There is a feminine force that is present in both men and ...

SAGUARO is a 10-foot tall stainless steel sculpture of a cactus designed to promote thriving marine life designed and constructed by the team of Ghazal Ghazi, Bill Baron and Michael Ramirez. The saguaro cactus is a unique, famous, and distinct cactus that only grows in the Sonoran Desert, which extends into southern Arizona and the city of Tucson. The artist believes having a sculpture of a saguaro cactus on the bottom of ...

SPACE NEST designer Frank Henderson is based in Evanston, IL. The sculpture is inspired by the beautiful homes of Diatoms, which often use circle packing to generate an ornate organic geometry from silicate. The nest is created by circle-packing various sizes of circles into a dome shape. The resulting form is incredibly strong and resilient while using minimal materials to create maximum size and usable negative space. The ...

THE SEED AND THE SEA artist Davide Galbiati’s goal at the UMA is to educate the public on the fragility of marine ecosystems and the importance of preserving the balance of marine life with all of its members. To succeed in his message, he relies on the metaphor of the Seed in Nature. The Seed… nothing is more important in Nature. It represents the matrix which will make it possible to have thousands of trees. For ...

WAVE! is a creation courtesy of American artist Benjamin Mefford. Benjamin is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus on sculpture. The sculpture, a larger-than-life hand, will be constructed to facilitate coral growth utilizing Kansas fencepost limestone columns to create the bulk of the sculpture. These repurposed columns are relics from early settlers who split each block using rudimentary techniques. Now fallen and ...

Artist Vince Tatum will pay homage to one of mother nature’s most amazing creations found on coral reefs, The Giant Barrel Sponge (Xestospongia muta) with his sculpture, X.MUTA. Vince explains, “My goal is to imitate mother nature’s blueprint as best I can, but with clean sprayed cement over rebar. I’ll leave the cement in its organic blown state, to mimic the ebbs and flows of the surface of a sponge, and to give ...

ASPIRATION designer Shohini Ghosh is a Denver-based artist originally from New Delhi, India. Aspiration is a silhouette of a young girl’s face looking up in the longing at the wonders of the future. The sculpture has a beautiful balance of negative and positive space through and around which fish and turtles may swim without hindrance and on which corals can grow. A snorkeling enthusiast and great lover of turtles, Shohini ...

When building the concept for her piece BUBBLY BARNACLES, artist Donna Conklin King thought about the duality of decay and resiliency and found inspiration in barnacles. Barnacles stick to the undersides of vessels, to other sea life, to each other, and to pretty much anything they come in contact with. While they are an annoyance, the beauty in their destruction is also their strength - the glue! They secrete a fast-curing ...

The Gulf of Mexico and live music are two common chords that bring people together on 30A according to artist Vince Tatum. His sculpture, COMMON CHORD, combines these two local loves by joining music with nature in perfect harmony. The sculpture is a celebration of the natural beauty that surrounds us all and brings us together. Whether it’s gathering on the beach with Osprey soaring overhead, playing in the Gulf ...

DAWN DANCERS designer Shohini Ghosh is a Denver-based artist originally from New Delhi, India. “Dawn Dancers” is a sculpture of two seahorses doing a dance. Seahorses are a flagship species, charismatic symbols of the coral reefs, estuaries and seaweed coastlines. The presence of Seahorses indicate the health of a reef system. ‘Dawn Dancers’ is a silhouette of two seahorses doing the hypnotically romantic mating ...

ECO-BUG by Florida-based artist Priscilla D’Brito allows her to introduce the “Eco-Bug”, the beginning of a new series of aquatic insects that will venture the underwater world. UMA would be the first to have the “Eco-Bug” as this concept design will be spread throughout the world. The “Eco-Bug” can be accompanied by creative exotic plant sculptures as they journey the bottom of the ocean creating colonies. These insects ...

FROM THE DEPTHS by artist Kirk Seese evokes a childhood wonder about the mythical creatures that live in the depths of the sea. The concrete sculpture portrays a large stylized fish, something you might see as an illustration on a map to warn sailors about the treacherous waters ahead. With its mouth open, it offers a wide cave for smaller fish to hide in and has a 36″ diameter turtle escape hole towards the back. The artist ...

JYC’s DREAM is a creation by American designer Kevin Reilly as an homage to the “Aqualung,” arguably Jacques Cousteau’s greatest invention, and is a collaborative effort with the South Walton Montessori Academy primary students and their teachers. The sculpture, a larger-than-life diver’s head, is a model of captain Cousteau wearing the original version of his invention. Ascending from the mouthpiece will be a trail ...

LOVE THYSELF is a collaborative project between Artist/Designer Maxine and her team including Concept Designer Maurice Hunter, body casting with fellow artist Velia Lala, Kyler Fitch with Emerald Coast Mobile Welding, and Eric Shackelford with Destin Metal Shop. The group shares that “Being part of the UMA experience will be a great opportunity for us to express our passion for utilizing art to communicate ...

OPUS is the second sculpture to be installed at the UMA for Santa Rosa Beach, Florida-based artist Allison Wickey who is also a founding partner of the project. The octopus is the ultimate mystery, embodying all that the sea symbolizes in one creature. Not only are they intriguing, but they are also elegant and mesmerizing to watch. They are known to 'play' with other species, walk on two legs and befriend humans. ...

PROPELLER IN MOTION is a design by artist and contemporary custom furniture creator Marek Anthony who resides in Dallas, Texas via Madrid, Spain. “Propeller in Motion” is an abstraction of a moving ship’s propeller being swallowed into the sea bed. The sculpture is designed to be permeable to light, sea water and living things and will be constructed from individual propeller-shaped concrete pieces mounted on a ...

RING MY BELL is an interactive sculpture based on the historical form of an offshore bell buoy from artist Bradley Touchstone. Visitors will be able to ring the bell inside the tower using a striker that is permanently attached to the structure. The primary material for the piece is solid steel bar stock and 1/4" plate. The four sides of the tower include cutout illustrations of sea life...

Artist Elise Gilbert is interested in posing a question within the viewer's understanding that draws on the philosophical proposition of naturalism. One of the key questions this concept evokes is whether nature possesses inherent perfection. Some may find perfection in nature's complexity and balance, while others may argue that nature is chaotic, imperfect, or harsh in its manifestations. When the viewer experiences this ...

SUNKEN SPORES by artist Ashley Rivers is a piece based off a few ceramic mushrooms she created in the past. Mushrooms are vital to ecosystems around the world. Through mycelium, mushrooms help other plants share nutrients and communicate through chemical signals. Created mostly of concrete, with metal mesh stabilizers, the piece will stand roughly 6' 2" tall. The shapes within the piece will allow the perfect ...

Husband and wife team, design duo, and dive buddies Ingram Ober and Marisol Rendón will co-create THREE WISHES. When we dive we are experiencing magic, the magic of being weightless, of traveling in a foreign environment, of shedding all but the most essential of concerns. For us every beam of light, every stone, animals large and small seem imbibed with magic and we are lucky to experience it. “Three Wishes” is ...

WE ALL LIVE HERE artist Marisol Rendón believes being underwater changes our experience of gravity and time. It makes us aware of our breath. We are acutely aware we are visitors to another world bound by very different rules. This change of perspective, and the mindfulness it helps to generate is a main ingredient in experiencing art within UMA, and is the foundation for fantasy, interspecies empathy, and activism. We All ...