Metamorphic Ocean Art

We can only begin to fully comprehend and truly experience the world around us as we actively attempt to face its entirety in every given moment, while adjusting ourselves perpetually to its growth.  Metamorphic Functional and Figurative Ocean Sculptures (Metamorphic Ocean Art) is a way for us to approach the expansive breathing soul of our planet by incorporating its living spirit into our material proximity, thus smearing the line between the dynamic nature outside and our constrictive, man-made dwellings.  

In tradition with Nature Art, these pieces use ocean life as the backbone building material.  And although each item partly dries in the absence of ocean water, it, none the less, retains its original agility.  Constantly changing its shape and properties in the context of its surrounding environment—or metamorphosing, it may be regarded as another living part of it. 

Through their evocative shapes and arrangements, these figurines are a life form with a distinctive soul and spirit.  Often surrealistic in their nature, they may resemble predatory creatures with fantastical features.  To surround oneself with their likeness is to embrace the dangers of the real world and accept the “original sin” of humanity—as first proposed by the Romantics and Symbolists at the turn of last century—thereby better appreciating the beauty and romance of life.

Arts and Crafts proponents rightly pointed out that we, as humans, may desire to incorporate nature within our immediate environment to better suit our inner instincts regarding the comfort of a living space.  Metamorphic Ocean Art revives this call amid the modern awareness of the importance of the natural environment.  With their evocative forms, “breathable” material and oceanic origins, these objects incorporate global life and eternal vision into the everyday functions and décor that we touch in the given moment, everyday.

“I have always been profoundly interested in the unseen aspects of life, reading about metaphysics, meditating, becoming fascinated by how abstract art expresses what can’t be understood by the eyes and mind yet can be clearly felt. I am attracted to spheres because they are nature’s most efficient shape (requiring the least amount of structure to enclose the greatest possible volume) - their elegance conjuring entities as massive as planets all the way down to the shape of sub-atomic particles, encompassing the notion of completion, universal truth and wholeness.” 

Born in Switzerland, Monika Steiner currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area where she received her BFA degree from Sonoma State University. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally in galleries, museums, and public exhibitions.

In my art work, both the prints and the sculpture, I capture the flow or motion of the object. Nature is my inspiration, although I have been including portraites in my recent work. Most of my work is an abstraction of a landscape or object in a landscape.  I have also been working with making paper and using it to create sculptures and art pieces.

I love the shape, design, “feel” of industrial objects.  I search these objects out at garage sales, flea markets, dumps, attics, construction sites and roadsides, add them to my collection and then get to know them.  In time their individual contours, textures, compositions suggest a whole – something new created from the found – that stands on its own as a complete system.  My WaterContraptions create soundscapes that afford relief from the urban hum, attract birds and their songs, provide self-sustaining plant habitats and “soften” any garden or home environment with the sight and sound of moving, falling water.  Each piece is completely one-of-a-kind, made to the order suggested by its reclaimed elements, held together by my tried and true “fountain plumbing” technique and made personal by the setting you provide.  Every WaterContraption also comes with a foolproof prescription for it’s new owner: Listen, watch, relax, repeat.   

Inspired by years of shopping for second-hand fashion, Kristie transforms vintage clothing into assemblage objects. Using only a seam-ripper, she deconstructs leather jackets, cotton sweaters, fur coats, and other natural fabrics, wrapping and layering them around a wide array of discarded chairs. Personalities are born out of the process, revealing unexpected silhouettes and layers of meaning. The paradoxical qualities of the objects resonate: at one level they are an abject collection of vintage items, and at another level they are loaded with architectural, dramatic, emotional content.