This is a long story, but such an interesting one that I couldn’t bear to pare it down. Do tell me which parts intrigue you most.
RISING FROM THE SEA
Mixed media construction: Altered paper, sea squirts (white crust tunicates), porcupine fish spines.
2016.
Like stars rising up out of the ocean… the elements of this piece are amazing, worthy of deep contemplation. When I was handling them I was indeed holding infinity in the palm of my hand (thanks to William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence,” for that phrase.)
The white cylindrical forms are (the dried-up bodies of) white crust tunicates (Didemnum vexillum). I found them on the beach on a calm spring day--nothing remotely similar ever seen before or after. The encrusted sticks immediately reminded me of the rock candy you make by crystallizing sugar over a suspended string. But this is not a crystallization process: tunicates are “sea squirts” --so called because when lifted out of the water, they contract and squirt water out, although it is hard to imagine these hardened bodies contracting at all. The animals formed a colony around some form of sea grass or other vertical element. Tunicates are filter-feeding animals with a sac-like body form. They live within this outer “crust,” which actually functions as a kind of living tunic. They reproduce quickly and in their larval stage, a square centimeter may hold up to 300 tunicates. Thousands and thousands must be in use of these forms—think of the amassing colonies, holding, enclosing, enveloping. It’s not rock candy, but it is a kind of eye candy, the always astonishing world of form, which is so complex and so simple, so much an example of her infinite variety.
A sea squirt (tunicate) colony that reminds me of rock candy. It’s an invasive colony growing on a suspended oyster growing device called a French tube, in Drakes Bay, Point Reyes, California. Photo from The Coastodian, March 2014.
I didn’t have to do anything to the tunicates, but there was a long process involved in extracting the other material, the tripod-like pointed forms, which are spines from the skin of porcupine fish. (These are sometimes erroneously called pufferfish, but they aren’t exactly the same.) I first discovered a washed-up specimen of a bulbous, prickly-looking creature on the Pacific coast of Mexico. It looked both faintly comical and frightening; the inflated body felt like an over-inflated balloon, but the spikes were formidable. I discovered these two features were the very characteristics of the way this animal defends itself; when threatened, it inflates itself to three times its normal size by sucking or pumping in extra water. Its stomach, which is pleated, expands to nearly a hundred times its original volume. Biologist Beth Brainerd observed the amazing structure of these pleats -– there are folds within folds within folds, down to pleats so tiny that they can be seen only through a microscope. (It’s like a fractal--isn’t this the way form keeps going, in our bodies too…)
 Views of living porcupine fish. The bodies are not inflated and the spines are visible, but lying flat (much like a porcupine’s quills). |   |
When the porcupine fish inflates, its usually-flattened spines rise to vertical positions, forming an all-over armor reminiscent of porcupine quills. This happens because the skin is so stretched that it pulls two of the tripod-legs of the spikes backward and the other forward, snapping the structure upright. An inflated porcupine fish can’t move very fast—it is the opposite of streamlined—but it doesn't need to go fast with this kind of protection.
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Inflated porcupine fish with extended spines.
I was immediately interested in the spines—beautiful white external bones, almost begging to pulled out. I started with brute force—tugging, trying to extricate them from the skin, but they wouldn’t budge. I didn’t yet realize the ingenious structure of the spines, or the two layers of skin they stitch together. I soaked the skin, making it somewhat more pliable, and with great effort and snipping, slowly retrieved them, one by one. I admired their tenacity. Removed, they were like trophies, and I loved just looking at them, at their smooth, plastic-like surfaces and their satisfying shapes. It was especially lovely to take in the different sizes and how they each grew to fit their position on the animal.
 Soaking the original Mexican fish  |  Skeleton of porcupine fish. |
Spines still attached to organic matter.
 |  The threatening quality of porcupine fish spines were put to use in the South Seas. These defensive helmets were used by warriors from Fiji and neighboring islands. These must have been much bigger fish than the ones I have worked with. |
Many years went by before I encountered this type of fish again, this time on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Mexico. The ones washed up there had different coloration, and they were smaller (no more than 10” long) and their spines less lethal-looking. I haven’t a definitive identification, but they may be what is sometimes called a striped burrfish. Its spines are always visible, and while the animal also inflates when threatened, it would only grow to about twice its original size. Burrfish live in seagrass beds in bays and coastal lagoons associated with reefs. They are nocturnal. They have widely-spaced, bulging eyes and fused teeth that form a beak-like structure.
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I saw a number of partially dried-out porcupine fish in the aftermath of a red tide (an off-shore algae bloom that reduces oxygen in the sea), and was excited about extracting more spines, but I hesitated because the decaying bodies were quite rank. I also remembered how difficult it was to get the spines out when I was in Mexico. I took some home and kept them in covered container until I could decide what to do (fire up the new grill and risk getting a pot messy with the flame or stinky with the fish smell?). While I was deliberating, I found a remnant of another dead porcupine with just a bit of the skin left on the spines. As the skin dried even further, I was able to extract the spines with some poking.
This still wasn’t going to help me get them out of an intact fish. I put one in peroxide to soak and of course it bloated out, got soft. As it rehydrated, I was able to really see its patterning—to take in its stripes and the false “eyes” on its back.
This still wasn’t going to help me get them out of an intact fish. I put one in peroxide to soak and of course it bloated out, got soft. As it rehydrated, I was able to really see its patterning—to take in its stripes and the false “eyes” on its back.
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I put on my gloves and got ready to gut the fish. It had few spines on the belly, so it was possible to hold the little fins and start there. I used a grapefruit knife with a serrated edge to saw away at the flesh. Once the innards were removed and the spiny skin was rinsed, I hung it up to dry on the clothesline. The smell was mostly gone after the peroxide rinse.
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I varied the process to see what worked best. I never soaked the second fish, but wetted it down enough to rinse it off. It was easier to work when less saturated; I could actually get the inside out more easily. I peeled back the skin and let it dry further. The pattern of the spines in the flattened-out skin is stunning. They overlap in what looks like a mathematical progression, not unlike the “boots” of the sago palm that are so common in southern Florida.
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The last steps of the spine extraction were done in the kitchen. I first tried to soften the skin in the microwave, but that only made the bones brittle. Remembering how I extracted hooves and bones from deer legs, I then boiled the spiny skins. This worked beautifully, especially because I could slit the skins to make even smaller pieces. The skin eventually broke down in the boiling water, and I could pull out the spines, much as one would extract a bone from a fish on a dinner plate. The spines were a little yellow from the fat in the skin, but a short soak in peroxide brightened them nicely. I love their form, which seems to hold a key to something mystical—it reminds me of some aspect of sacred geometry I can’t quite name.
Meanwhile, I learned more about the porcupine/pufferfish family, feeling more amazed all the time. I read that once the body of the puffer fish is fully bloated, its predators can neither take a grip nor bite through the skin. In fact, it has been found that its tough body remains unscathed even after a grown man stands on it. No wonder I couldn’t win the tug of war with my first Mexican find! (I can’t identify the particular type of that porcupine fish—there are more than 120 species of Tetraodontidae in all, and I only have my documentation photograph.) In addition to their inflation and spines, many of these animals also carry a powerful toxin. It is found in various parts, including the skin, ovaries, muscles and liver. This paralyzing poison, known as Tetrodotoxin, is about a thousand times more deadly than cyanide; one source says a single puffer fish (species or size not specified) has enough to kill 30 adult humans! There is no antidote. Nevertheless, the fish are still popular for aquarium displays, and some puffers are considered a delicacy food fish in Asia. The dish (known as fugu in Japan, and bogeo in Korea) is prepared by specially trained chefs who know how to reduce its poisonous effects. I cannot confirm this, but have heard that about a hundred diners die every year after consuming it. Even if the figure is apocryphal, we can see what a powerful hold this fish has on human consciousness.
The most astounding part of the story just came through recently in an excerpt from a BBC-Earth documentary that was posted on YouTube. In 1995, divers noticed a small mandala-like circular pattern on the sea floor off Japan. It was mathematically perfect, and nobody knew what it was. Once they started looking, they discovered similar circles nearby. The mystery was heightened by the fact that they came and went unpredictably, and they reminded observers of crop circles, though they were completely underwater.
The most astounding part of the story just came through recently in an excerpt from a BBC-Earth documentary that was posted on YouTube. In 1995, divers noticed a small mandala-like circular pattern on the sea floor off Japan. It was mathematically perfect, and nobody knew what it was. Once they started looking, they discovered similar circles nearby. The mystery was heightened by the fact that they came and went unpredictably, and they reminded observers of crop circles, though they were completely underwater.
Finally, observers realized that the formations were created by a newly discovered species of pufferfish—by male fish, who use them to attract mates. They laboriously flap their fins as they swim along the seafloor, essentially carving out the pattern in a circular formation by disrupting the sediment. They even use shell bits to stabilize some of the higher areas. The documentary claims a fish works non-stop for a week to make a single circle! One fish is only about 5 inches long, so it is quite a feat to make something of this scale. The video of the fish doing this is, in the truest sense of the word, awesome.
 The scale of the circle is understandable in relation to the underwater camera operator |  |
I have actually been slow to find ways to incorporate the porcupine fish spines in my work; their shapes are challenging to work with effectively. I do not want them to appear as they would on the fish, as I want the beauty of the whole tripod-like shape to be visible, rather than just the tip. (It’s as if I must peel away the skin for my audience, much as I had to do in processing the material.) Many of the spines I have are very small and delicate, and almost fly out of my hands when I try to handle them. In Rising From the Sea, that delicacy works well with the impressionistic forms of the background and the solidity of the tunicate.
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