octopi

New Artwork: Catalyst

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Here’s some new artwork to kick off a new year! This piece was inspired by my encounter with two octopi on my last scuba dive this summer with Silviu in Arinaga while on residency at La Pedrada de Noemí. It’s pretty unusual to see the common octopus, Octopus vulgaris, out and about during the day as they are typically nocturnal predators, but it was a very windy day with a lot of churning water and that must have drawn them out.

I have titled this piece Catalyst. It is mixed media including QuickCure Clay, aquabord panel, acrylic, and QuickCure Glaze Coating. Catalyst is capable of being displayed on a pedestal or installed on a wall. It is 13.5x14.5x6.25".

If you’re curious about the sculptural process with QCC, here are a few photos I took along the way. The first two are still in the uncured, sculpting stage and the second two are post-curing but pre-painting. I was actually quite drawn to the piece in its unpainted state, but I had to paint the panel at the very least due to its own mixed media, multicolored composition so I decided to go ahead with painting the whole piece. I might do a different version at some point that’s completely monotone, though, since I liked that quite a lot too.

Octopodes

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I learned about the existence of the word "octopodes" yesterday and had to go on a research spree.  Here is what I've gathered: octopuses, octopi, and octopodes are all acceptable pluralizations of octopus.

  • Octopuses is the English pluralization.
  • Octopi stems from a popular misconception that octopus was originally a Latin word - it's actually Greek - and used to be considered grammatically incorrect but has since been used enough to become a viable option.
  • Octopodes comes from the original ancient Greek pluralization.

I have also just learned that despite the accuracy of the above statements, my spell check firmly denies the existence of both octopi and octopodes (and, in fact, pluralizations).  Nevertheless, I'm going to be testing out octopodes as my preferred pluralization for a while.  It has a nice sound.