The Diver

DONE!
I love things from and about the Sea... LOVE the effect of micaseous iron oxide wash over the inside... it's hard to appreciate the effect in pics. The text is from "The Diver". It has been my favourite passage for years. I was going to use something from Moby Dick BUT on completion this seemed more appropriate, given how I felt about things on creating this work. It concerns the way things change, the layers that make something up, even bad things and how, it culminates in something beautiful, the way a pearl is created. I always refer to this passage when I have regrets in life or am going through a bad patch... it all will be a layer of me but not tarnish me, just help in the creation, build me up and I WILL glow with luster. It also makes me remember that there is good or the potential for good in everything, sometimes it's just got a layer of gunk over it just now.

Michael taught how to build layers in work and to use all these old, unloved things and layering them, like a pearl, to end up with a beautiful jewel. The pearl in which we may recognize our deeper secrets...
For many things happen to those who dive to the bottom of the sea. Pearls in themselves are things of mystery and adventure-if you follow the career of a single pearl it will give you material for a hundred tales. And pearls are like poets' tales: disease turned into loveliness, at the same time transparent and opaque, secrets of the depths brought to light to please young women, who will recognize in them the deeper secrets of their own bosoms.

THIS is where my saying "Many things happen to those who dive to the bottom of the sea" comes from. It has nothing at all to do with Paul. :)