“Stainless steel Leatherback Turtle sculpture. Life-sized, heat-tinted piece captures the unique ridged shell and powerful flippers of the ocean giant.”
The Leatherback Turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) is the largest of all living turtles, unique for its lack of a bony shell, instead possessing a thick, leathery skin reinforced by thousands of tiny bone plates. This life-sized sculpture translates that powerful, hydrodynamic form into stainless steel, using the metal's weight and texture to honor this ancient voyager of the deep.
In this piece, I focused on the turtle’s signature longitudinal ridges and the rugged, tactile surface of its "leathery" carapace. To mimic the deep, mottled blues and blacks of the species, the steel was intensely heated, resulting in a permanent, iridescent patina that shifts like moonlight on wet skin.
The sculpture captures the turtle in a state of grounded power, with its massive front flippers extended as if navigating the ocean currents or hauling its impressive bulk across a nesting beach. By rendering this vulnerable giant in unyielding steel, the work serves as a testament to the endurance of a species that has survived since the age of the dinosaurs.
